THE  AMERICAN  ACADEMY 

OP 

POLITICAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCE 

PHILADELPHIA 


Former*’^residents, 

-EDMUND  J.  JAMES,  Ph.  D.,  Northwestern  University  (1890-1900). 

' 'SAMUEL  McCUNE  LINDSAY,  Ph.D.,  University  of  Pennsylvania  (1900-1902). 

President, 

[L.  S.  ROWE,  Ph.  D„  University  of  Pennsylvania. 


Vice-Presidents, 

SAMUEL  McCUNE  LINDSAY,  Ph,  D.,  FRANKLIN  H.  GIDDINGS,  LL. 

University  of  Pennsylvania.  Columbia  University. 

WOODROW  WILSON,  Ph,  D., 

Princeton  University. 

Counsel, 

HON.  CLINTON  ROGERS  WOODRUFF,  Esq., 
Girard  Building,  Philadelphia. 


Secretary, 

JAMES  T.  YOUNG,  Ph.  D„ 
University  of  Pennsylvania. 


Treasurer, 

STUART  WOOD,  Esq., 

400  Chestnut  Street,  Philadelphia. 


Librarian, 

PROF.  JOHN  L.  STEWART, 
Lehigh  University. 


GENERAL  ADVISORY  COMMITTEE 


RT.  HON.  ARTHUR  J.  BALFOUR,  M,  P.. 
London,  England. 

PROF.  C.  F.  BASTABLE, 

Dublin  University. 

PROF.  F.  W.  BLACKMAR, 

University  of  Kansas. 

SIR  JOHN  BOURINOT,  K.C.M.G.,  D.C.L., 
Ottawa,  Canada. 

PROF.  R.  T.  ELY, 

Wisconsin  University. 

PROF.  HENRY  W  FARNAM, 

Yale  University. 

PROF.  W.  W.  FOLWELL, 

University  of  Minnesota, 

HON.  LYMAN  J.  GAGE, 

Washington,  D.  C. 

DR.  KARL  T.  von  INAMA-STERNEGG, 
Vienna,  Austria. 


PROF.  JOHN  K.  INGRAM,  LL.  D., 
Trinity  College,  Dublin. 

PROF.  J.  W.  JENKS, 

Cornell  University. 

PROF.  E.  LEVASSEUR, 

Paris,  France. 

PROF.  AUGUST  MEITZEN, 
University  of  Berlin. 

PROF.  BERNARD  MOSES, 

University  of  California. 

PROF.  HENRY  WADE  ROGERS. 
Yale  University. 

PROF.  WILLIAM  SMART,  LL.  D., 
University  of  Glasgow. 

HON.  HANNIS  TAYLOR,  LL.  D., 
Mobile,  Alabama. 

PROF.  LESTER  F.  WARD, 
Washington,  D.  C. 


Se  t  ^ 


in.  The  Housing  Problem 


(79) 


UNIVERSITY  o^ 
ILLINOIS  LIBRARY 
AI  URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2018  with  funding  from 

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Tenement  House  Regulation— The  Reasons  for 

It— Its  Proper  Limitations 

By  Honorable  Robert  W.  De  Forest,  Tenement  House  Commis¬ 
sioner  of  the  City  of  New  York 


(8i) 


TENEMENT  HOUSE  REGULATION— THE  REASONS 
FOR  IT— ITS  PROPER  LIMITATIONS 


By  Robert  W.  De  Forest 
Tenement  House  Commissioner  of  the  City  of  New  York 


When  Theodore  Roosevelt,  then  Governor  of  the  State  of 
New  York,  attended  the  opening  of  the  Tenement  House  Exhibi¬ 
tion  of  the  Charity  Organization  Society  of  New  York,  and  looked 
over  the  models  of  tenements,  old  and  new,  and  the  charts  which 
showed  the  close  connection  between  the  housing  of  the  vast  ma¬ 
jority  of  that  city’s  population,  and  health,  pauperism  and  crime, 
he  said  to  the  few  of  us  who  had  organized  this  exhibition — “Tell 
us  at  Albany  what  to  do,  and  we  will  do  it.”  The  result  was  the 
New  York  State  Tenement  House  Commission  of  1900,  the  enact¬ 
ment  last  year  of  the  most  advanced  code  of  tenement  house  laws 
as  yet  put  in  force  in  any  American  city,  and  the  creation  for  the 
first  time  in  this  country  of  a  department  directly  charged  with 
the  oversight  of  the  construction  and  proper  maintenance  of  tene¬ 
ment  houses. 

The  tenement  house  problem  we  had  to  meet  in  New  York 
was  the  most  serious  of  any  city  in  the  civilized  world,  for  in  New 
York,  according  to  the  last  census,  out  of  3,437,202  inhabitants, 
2,273,079,  or  more  than  two-thirds,  lived  in  tenement  houses,  and 
there  were  82,652  of  these  tenements  in  the  city. 

O  The  interest  in  this  particular  phase  of  the  housing  question 

is  not  confined  to  New  York.  No  one  who  has  followed,  even  care¬ 
lessly,  public  opinion  on  this  subject  can  fail  to  realize  the  hold  it 
has  upon  the  public  conscience.  It  may  be  that  some  tremble  at 
the  effect  upon  their  own  fortunes  of  a  possible  social  revolution, 
and  seek  to  protect  themselves,  for  their  own  sake,  by  trying  to 
make  what  they  call  the  lower  classes  more  comfortable  in  their 
homes.  But  the  large  body  of  men  and  women  in  this  country 
who  are  giving  to  this  subject  attention,  are  doing  so  from  love  of 
their  fellow-men,  and  an  earnest  desire  to  give  them  in  their  homes 
some  of  the  healthful  surroundings  and  comforts  they  enjoy  in 
their  own. 


(83) 


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There  are  few  large  cities  in  America  in  which  there  is  not 
some  tenement  regulation,  and  some  agitation  for  its  extension. 
At  the  moment  there  is  an  active  movement  in  Boston  for  the 
appointment  of  a  commission  to  frame  a  new  code  of  tenement 
house  laws  for  that  city.  There  is  a  similar  movement  in  Chicago 
and  in  Cincinnati.  Nor  is  this  activity'  confined  to  the  larger 
cities.  Kansas  City  in  the  West,  Hartford  in  the  East,  Yonkers, 
Syracuse  and  Rochester  in  New  York,  are  already  moving  in  the 
same  direction,  and  the  subject  is  receiving  close  attention  in 
Washington,  Cleveland  and  Pittsburg. 

The  New  York  law  of  last  winter  was  a  state  law  applicable 
to  all  cities  of  the  first  class.  It  included  Buffalo  as  well  as  New 
York,  and  Buffalo  did  its  full  part  in  securing  the  enactment  of  the 
law.  Philadelphia  is  emphatically  the  City  of  Homes,  and  not  of 
tenements.  Fortunately  for  Philadelphia,  its  working  classes 
are  almost  exclusively  housed  in  single  family  dwellings.  It  has, 
as  most  of  you  know,  an  admirable  code  of  tenement  house  laws, 
which  has  proved  very  useful  to  us  at  New  York  in  preparing  ours, 
and  it  has  its  Octavia  Hill  Association  to  advance  the  cause  of 
housing  reform. 

In  some  quarters  benevolent  people  are  proposing  to  build 
model  tenements.  That  is  good  as  far  as  it  goes,  but  if  at  the  same 
time  other  people,  not  benevolent,  who  have  no  motive  but  gain 
for  themselves,  are  permitted  to  build  tenements  which  are  not 
models,  the  extent  of  progress  is  very  limited.  What  we  must  do, 
first  and  foremost,  is  to  secure  proper  legislation,  using  that  term 
in  its  broadest  sense,  to  include  city  ordinance,  as  well  as  state  law. 
Legislation  to  regulate  building,  so  as  to  secure  for  new  buildings 
proper  air  and  light  space  and  proper  sanitation;  legislation  to 
regulate,  in  buildings  old  and  new,  their  maintenance  so  that  health 
conditions  may  be  improved  and  at  least  not  be  impaired;  legis¬ 
lation,  moreover,  that  provides  the  means  for  its  own  enforcement, 
by  proper  inspection. 

Most  of  us  have  been  brought  up  to  believe  that,  as  owners  of 
real  estate,  we  could  build  on  it  what  we  pleased,  build  as  high  as 
we  pleased,  and  sink  our  buildings  as  low  as  we  pleased.  Our  ideas 
of  what  constitutes  property  rights  and  what  constitutes  liberty 
are  largely  conventional.  They  vary  with  time  and  place.  They 
are  different  in  different  countries.  Liberty,  proper  liberty,  to¬ 
day,  may,  under  changing  conditions,  become  license  to-morrow. 


Tenement  House  Regulation 


85 


I  came  home  from  Europe  not  long  since  with  a  French  friend, 
who  had  gone  home  to  his  native  country  to  take  possession  of  his 
ancestral  estates.  He  told  me  of  having  found  the  trees  grown 
up  quite  thickly  around  his  father’s  country  home,  and  of  the 
difficulties  he  had  encountered  in  obtaining  permission  from  the 
public  authorities  to  cut  down  some  of  them,  which  was  finally 
only  granted  on  condition  that  he  replanted  elsewhere.  That  his 
trees  could  only  be  cut  down  with  the  consent  of  the  public  au¬ 
thorities,  and  that  he  could  properly  be  required  to  replant  else¬ 
where  as  a  condition  of  obtaining  that  consent,  seemed  to  him  a 
part  of  the  eternal  order  of  things.  He  no  more  questioned  it  in 
his  mind  than  we,  who  live  in  cities,  question  the  propriety  of 
obtaining  from  the  city  building  department  a  permit  to  build, 
based  upon  approval  of  our  architect’s  plans. 

Lecky,  in  one  of  his  later  books,  speaking  of  sanitary  legisla¬ 
tion,  says:  “Few  things  are  more  curious  than  to  observe  how 
rapidly,  during  the  past  generation,  the  love  of  individual  liberty 
has  declined;  how  contentedly  the  English  race  are  committing 
great  departments. of  their  lives  to  the  web  of  regulations  restricting 
and  encircling  them.’’  It  is  not  that  love  of  liberty  has  declined; 
it  is  that  the  English  race  are  meeting  new  conditions  with  the 
same  genius  with  which  they  have  evolved  their  great  system  of 
common  law.  Living,  as  most  of  them  did  a  century  ago,  in 
separate  houses,  and  in  small  villages  or  towns,  every  man  could 
build  as  he  pleased  and  could  maintain  his  building  as  he  pleased 
without  seriously  endangering  the  liberty  of  his  neighbors,  but  with 
the  steady  movement  of  the  population  from  the  country  to  the 
city,  and  the  marvelous  growth  of  cities,  not  only  horizontally  but 
vertically,  new  conditions  must  be  met,  and  the  property  rights 
and  liberty  of  one  neighbor  must  be  limited  to  protect  the  property 
rights  and  liberty  of  another.  If  a  man  built  an  isolated  house  in 
the  country,  without  light  or  air  for  the  bedrooms,  and  kept  it  in 
such  filthy  condition  as  to  breed  disease,  it  is  a  fair  question  whether 
his  liberty  should  be  infringed  by  any  building  or  health  regulation. 
He  may  be  fairly  left  free  to  suffer  the  consequences  of  his  own  mis¬ 
use  of  his  liberty.  His  death,  and  that  of  his  family,  from  disease 
so  caused  may,  as  an  awful  example,  do  more  to  advance  civiliza¬ 
tion  by  making  his  neighbors  more  careful,  than  would  his  life  and 
theirs  under  enforced  sanitary  regulation.  But  if  that  same  man 
is  separated  fi  om  you  and  me  only  by  a  board  partition  or  twelve- 


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The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy 


inch  wall,  and  our  families  meet  every  time  they  go  into  the  street 
or  into  the  back  yard,  his  liberty  must  be  restricted  in  some  degree 
in  order  to  enable  you  and  me  to  enjoy  ours. 

How  and  why  has  tenement  house  law  been  evolved  in  Amer¬ 
ican  cities?  In  the  same  way  in  which  the  Anglo-Saxon  mind  deals 
with  any  such  problems.  Just  as  it  evolved  common  law,  and  for 
the  same  reasons.  First  a  case — that  is,  an  evil — to  be  remedied; 
afterward  a  decision — the  application  of  the  remedy,  and  the  es¬ 
tablishment  of  a  principle  or  law  by  which  similar  evils  shall  be 
remedied.  It  is  not  according  to  the  genius  of  our  race  to  provide 
the  remedy  in  advance  of  the  supposed  disease.  Better  be  sure 
that  the  disease  really  exists,  even  if  some  few  die  from  it,  and  then 
provide  the  remedy  which  will  be  sure  to  meet  actual  conditions, 
than  to  burden  the  community  with  advance  remedies  for  diseases 
that  after  all  may  prove  to  be  imaginary.  Even  if  the  disease  be 
not  imaginary,  such  remedies  are  apt  to  be  worse  than  the  disease* 
itself.  Thus,  in  Anglo-Saxon  countries,  a  conflagration  has  usually 
preceded  precautions  against  fire,  and  the  evils  of  sunless,  airless 
and  unwholesome  tenements  have  preceded  any  attempt  to  prevent 
these  deplorable  conditions.  Eventually  we  act,  and  when ’we  do 
we  act  practically. 

It  may  be  well  to  define  what  is  meant  by  a  tenement  house, 
for  without  definition  there  is  infinite  confusion  in  the  use  of  this 
term.  In  one  of  our  recent  civil  service  examinations  in  New 
York,  a  candidate,  evidently  “learned  in  the  law,”  or  supposing 
himself  to  be  so,  defined  it  as  being  “That  which  is  neither  land 
nor  hereditament.”  It  has  its  popular  and  its  legal  meaning. 
Popularly,  it  is  used  to  designate  the  habitations  of  the  poorest 
classes,  without  much  thought  of  the  number  of  families  living 
under  any  particular  roof.  The  National  Cyclopedia  significantly 
says:  “Tenement  houses,  commonly  speaking,  are  the  poorest 
class  of  apartment  houses.  They  are  generally  poorly  built, 
without  sufficient  accommodation  for  light  and  ventilation,  and 
are  overcrowded.  The  middle  rooms  often  receive  no  daylight, 
and  it  is  not  uncommon  in  them  for  several  families  to  be  crowded 
into  one  of  their  dark  and  unwholesome  rooms.  Bad  air,  want 
of  sunlight  and  filthy  surroundings  work  the  physical  ruin  of  the 
wretched  tenants,  while  their  mental  and  moral  condition  is 
equally  lowered.  Attempts  to  reform  the  evils  of  tenement  life 
have  been  going  on  for  some  time  in  many  of  the  great  cities  of  the 
world.” 


Tenement  House  Regulation 


87 


Legally,  tenement  is  applied  to  any  communal  dwelling,  in¬ 
habited  by  three,  or  in  some  cities  four,  or  more  families,  living 
independently,  who  do  their  cooking  on  the  premises.  It  includes 
apartment  houses,  flat-houses  and  flats,  as  well  as  what  is  popularly 
called  a  tenement,  if  only  built  to  accommodate  three,  or  as  the 
case  may  be  four,  or  more  families  who  cook  in  the  house.  It  is  in 
its  legal  sense  that  I  use  the  term.  At  first  blush  it  may  seem 
objectionable  to  class  apartment  houses,  flat-houses  and  tenements, 
so  called,  together,  and  subject  them  to  the  same  code  of  regulation. 
Practically,  it  has  never  been  possible  to  draw  any  line  of  separation 
between  different  houses  which  are  popularly  designated  by  these 
different  words.  Nor  has  anyone  ever  suggested  any  regulation 
proper  for  the  poorest  tenement,  using  the  word  now  in  its  popular 
sense,  which  would  not  be  voluntarily,  and  as  matter  of  self-inter¬ 
est,  complied  with  in  the  most  expensive  apartment  house.  Nor  is 
there  any  certainty  that  what  to-day  is  popularly  called  an  apart¬ 
ment  house  may  not  to-morrow,  in  popular  parlance,  be  a  tenement 
of  the  worst  kind.  My  own  grandmother,  within  my  own  recollec¬ 
tion,  lived  in  what  was  then  one  of  the  finest  houses,  in  one  of  the 
most  fashionable  streets  of  New  York.  Not  long  since  I  passed 
the  house,  and  noticed  on  the  front  door  a  sign  reading,  “French 
flats  for  Colored  People.” 

In  its  earliest  form  (and  many  cities  have  not  yet  passed  be¬ 
yond  the  first  stage)  the  tenement  was  a  discredited  private  house, 
or  other  building,  not  originally  built  for  the  occupation^of  several 
families,  but  altered  for  the  purpose.  Each  floor  of  what  was  orig¬ 
inally  a  private  dwelling  was  changed  so  that  it  could  be  occupied 
by  a  family.  Later  on — it  may.be  at  the  beginning — each  floor 
was  subdivided  between  front  and  rear,  so  that  it  could  be  occupied 
by  two  families.  One  of  the  chief  evils  of  such  tenements  arose 
from  cellar  occupation,  and  consequently  some  of  the  earliest  tene¬ 
ment  house  regulations  relate  to  the  occupation  of  cellars. 

In  its  second  stage  the  tenement  house  is  built  for  the  purpose, 
imitating,  not  infrequently,  in  a  servile  manner,  the  arrangement 
of  the  altered  house,  with  its  dark  rooms,  and  only  gradually  being 
adapted  to  a  new  architectural  form  growing  out  of  its  special  use. 
The  introduction  of  running  water  and  city  health  regulations 
made  it  possible  and  desirable  to  locate  water-closets  inside. 
Courts  and  air-shafts  increased  in  size.  Fortunately,  the  process 
of  evolution  is  not  exhausted,  and  is  still  going  on. 


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The  tenement  is  still  regarded  in  many  places  as  an  exotic,  not 
adapted  to  our  climate.  But,  judging  from  the  history  of  New 
York  and  other  cities,  West  and  East,  the  tenement  house  has  come 
to  stay,  and  is,  perhaps,  destined  to  crowd  out  other  and  better 
forms  of  housing.  I  remember  well  when  the  first  tenement  to 
be  dignified  by  the  term  apartment  house  was  built  in  New  York. 
It  was  in  the  early  70’s.  Now  it  is  a  prevailing  type  of  new 
building  for  dwelling  purposes  on  Manhattan  Island.  There  were 
no  less  than  82,652  tenements  in  Greater  New  York  at  the  tiuie 
of  the  last  census.  The  development  of  the  tenement  has  been 
largely  influenced  by  legislation  intended  to  prevent  its  worst  evils. 
To  test  the  reason  for  such  legislation,  and  to  define  its  limitations, 
a  brief  summary  of  particular  subjects  of  regulation  is  desirable. 

Protection  against  fire  is  almost  universal.  Structural  pro¬ 
visions  directed  to  this  end  are  contained  in  the  building  laws  of 
all  cities.  In  New  York,  Philadelphia,  San  Francisco,  Jersey  City, 
Providence,  Syracuse  and  Nashville,  all  tenements  must  have  fire- 
escapes.  All  tenements  over  two  stories  in  height  must  have 
fire-escapes  in  St.  Louis,  Baltimore,  Louisville,  Minneapolis,  St 
Paul,  Denver,  Toledo  and  Columbus.  In  Chicago,  Cleveland  and 
Cincinnati,  this  rule  only  applies  to  tenements  over  three  stories 
in  height.  In  many  cities  tenements  must  be  fireproof  throughout 
when  over  a  certain  height.  In  Philadelphia  this  is  true  of  all  over 
four  stories;  in  Washington  of  those  over  five  stories;  in  New  York, 
Buffalo,  Louisville,  Minneapolis  and  Denver,  of  those  over  six 
stories  in  height.  In  Boston,  the  limit  is  65  feet. 

Light  and  ventilation  are  protected  by  minimum  open  spaces. 
In  Philadelphia  there  must  be  open  spaces  at  the  side  or  rear  equal 
to  one-fifth  of  the  lot  area,  and  the  minimum  width  of  all  spaces  is 
eight  feet.  In  Buffalo,  under  the  local  law  in  force  before  the 
general  state  act  of  1901  was  passed,  the  minimum  width  of  any 
outer  court  was  six  feet  in  two-story  buildings,  eight  feet  in  three 
and  four-story  buildings,  and  one  additional  foot  in  width  for  each 
additional  story.  The  minimum  interior  court  was  eight  by  ten. 
In  Boston,  a  clear  open  space  at  the  rear  must  be  left  equal  to  one- 
half  the  width  of  the  street  on  which  the  tenement  fronts,  and  there 
must  be  two  open  spaces  at  least  ten  feet  wide.  In  some  cities  the 
required  court  area  is  expressed  in  square  feet,  without  regard  to 
minimum  width  or  length,  and  increases  proportionately  with  the 
height  of  the  building.  This  principle  is  adopted  in  New  York, 


Tene^nent  House  Regulation 


89 


where  the  minimum  width  of  exterior  courts  in  buildings  five  stories 
high  is  six  feet  on  the  lot  line  and  twelve  feet  between  wings,  and 
the  minimum  area  of  interior  courts  on  the  lot  line  in  buildings 
of  the  same  height  is  twelve  by  twenty-four,  reduced  this  winter  in 
three-story  tenements  to  eight  by  fourteen.  Such  buildings  must 
have  an  open  yard  at  least  twelve  feet  wide  in  the  rear.^  The 
height  of  rooms  is  a'' most  universally  regulated,  the  minimum 
usually  being  eight  feet.  The  height  of  tenements  is  limited  in 
many  cities. 

Water  supply  is  prescribed.  In  New  York,  water  must  be 
furnished  on  each  floor.  In  Philadelphia  and  Buffalo,  on  each 
floor,  for  each  set  of  rooms.  In  Boston,  Chicago,  Jersey  City  and 
Kansas  City,  in  one  or  more  places  in  the  house  or  yard. 

Water-closet  accommodation  is  very  generally  prescribed.  In 
Philadelphia,  and  in  New  York  under  the  new  law,  there  must  be 
one  for  every  apartment.  Under  the  old  law  in  New  York,  and  at 
present  in  Chicago  and  Detroit,  there  must  be  one  for  every  two 
families.  In  other  cities  the  unit  is  the  number  of  persons.  It  is 
twenty  persons  in  Boston,  Baltimore  and  Denver;  ten  persons  in 
Rochester. 

The  reasons  for  tenement  regulation  may  be  roughly  classed  as 
follows — precise  classification  is  impossible,  as  it  is  seldom  that  any 
particular  regulation  is  attributable  solely  to  a  single  reason : 

The  protection  of  property  rights  in  adjacent  pioperty.  Such 
is  the  reason  for  regulations  requiring  fireproof  construction  in 
whole  or  in  part.  Such  is  the  chief  reason  for  limitations  of  height 
and  for  leaving  an  obligatory  open  space  at  the  rear  of  each  house 
so  as  to  preserve  thorough  ventilation  for  the  block.  The  protec¬ 
tion  of  neighbors  and  the  community  fr,om  unsanitary  conditions, 
by  which  they  might  be  affected,  or  which  might  breed  contagion. 
Under  this  class  falls  the  great  body  of  sanitary  law  and  tenement 
house  regulation  of  a  sanitary  kind.  That  all  legislation  which 
falls  within  these  classes  can  be  justified  as  a  proper  restraint  on  the 
liberty  and  property  rights  of  some,  in  order  to  protect  and  preserve 
the  property  rights  and  liberty  of  others,  is  clear. 

There  is  another  and  increasing  class  of  regulations  intended 
to  protect  the  life  and  health  of  those  who  cannot,  it  is  supposed, 
protect  themselves  by  any  means  within  their  control.  Fire- 
escapes,  which  are  almost  universally  required  by  law  in  non- fire¬ 
proof  tenement  houses,  belong  to  this  class.  There  is  no  such  regu- 


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The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy 


lation  for  private  houses,  and  there  is  usually  no  such  requirement 
for  two-family  houses.  The  reason  for  the  fire-escape  in  tenements 
and  hotels  must  rest  either  on  the  supposed  inability  of  the  inmates 
to  protect  themselves,  as  the  owner  of  a  private  house  can  protect 
himself  and  his  family,  or  else  from  the  greater  number  of  persons 
exposed  to  risk.  Of  such  class  also  is  the  law  providing  that  there 
be  a  separate  water-closet  for  each  apartment,  as  in  New  York,  or 
for  every  two  families,  as  in  Detroit  and  elsewhere,  and  that  lights 
be  kept  burning  in  public  halls  at  night.  No  such  regulations 
exist  for  private  houses.  They  can  be  only  justified  in  tenement 
houses  on  the  theory  that  the  tenants  in  such  houses  must  live  in 
them,  cannot  control  their  maintenance  in  these  particulars,  and 
are  entitled  to  the  protection  of  affirmative  law  for  these  necessities 
or  conveniences.  It  may  be  answered  that  they  need  not  rent 
rooms  in  houses  not  furnished  with  separate  water-closets,  and  the 
halls  of  which  are  not  kept  lighted,  unless  they  wish  to,  and  that 
they  should  not  be  restricted  in  their  liberty  to  rent  rooms  in  such 
houses,  it  may  be  at  a  lower  rent,  if  they  so  desire.  The  reply  may 
be,  and  in  some  cities  would  properly  be,  that  they  would  have  no 
choice  unless  the  law  intervened  to  protect  them.  Moreover,  it 
might  be  urged  that  in  the  provision  for  separate  water-closets  for 
each  apartment,  and  in  the  lighting  of  public  halls,  there  was  an 
element  of  protection  to  public  health  and  morals  in  which  the 
community  had  an  interest,  and  which  the  community  by  regula¬ 
tion  should  insure. 

I  have  sought  by  these  illustrations  to  point  the  closeness  of 
the  dividing  line  between  justifiable  restriction  of  the  individual 
liberty  of  the  house  builder  and  house  owner,  for  the  protection  of 
the  liberty  of  others,  and  paternalism.  It  is  undoubtedly  true, 
as  Mr.  Lecky  states  in  the  concluding  part  of  the  paragraph  to 
which  I  have  already  referred,  that  “the  marked  tendency  of  these 
generations  to  extend  the  stringency  and  area  of  coercive  legisla¬ 
tion  in  the  fields  of  sanitary  reform  is  one  that  should  be  carefully 
watched.  Its  exaggerations  may,  in  more  ways  than  one,  greatly 
injure  the  very  classes  it  is  intended  to  benefit.”  There  is  real 
danger  lest  in  our  eagerness  and  earnestness  to  improve  the  con¬ 
dition  of  others,  we  legislate  from  the  point  of  view  of  those  fathers 
and  mothers  who  are  always  ready  to  regulate  the  affairs  of  every 
family  but  their  own,  and  break  down  the  habit  of  self-dependence 


Tcneiiioit  House  Regulation 


91 


and  the  spirit  of  individual  responsibility  upon  which  the  vigor  of 
our  American  social  fafbric  so  largely  depends 

Perhaps  the  most  important  limitation  to  tenement  house 
reform,  in  the  construction  of  new  tenements,  is  the  question  of 
cost.  If  tenements  cannot  be  rented  at  a  profit  they  will  not  be 
built.  There  are  many  things  which  it  would  be  desirable  to  have 
in  a  tenement,  each  one  of  which  adds  to  its  cost,  and  if  they  be 
required  by  law  to  an  extent  which  makes  it  unremunerative, 
tenement  building  will  cease.  It  is  undoubtedly  desirable  that 
all  tenements  should  be  fireproof  throughout;  indeed,  the  same 
may  be  said  of  private  houses.  In  1892,  Boston  so  prescribed; 
but  few,  if  any,  were  erected,  and  the  law  was  consequently  modi¬ 
fied  in  1899. 

The  amount  of  rent  which  the  average  American  working¬ 
man  in  any  particular  city  can  pay  approximates  a  fixed  quantity. 
Any  legislation  which  materially  increases  this  rent,  or  which  pre¬ 
vents  building  and  therefore  prevents  his  finding  shelter,  is  quite 
certain  to  be  repealed.  This  proposition,  however,  is  not  so  dis¬ 
couraging  as  it  may  appear  at  the  outset.  The  standard  of  living 
among  our  working  classes  is  steadily  improving.  What  yesterday 
was  a  luxury,  to-day  is  a  necessity.  In  many  cities,  apartments 

which  are  not  provided  with  running  water  are  unrent  able. 

\ 

Bathing  facilities  are  increasingly  in  demand,  and  are  frequently 
being  provided.  Families  that  have  once  lived  in  apartments 
where  the  bedrooms  have  light  and  air,  will  not  hire  apartments 
which  are  dark  and  unventilated.  The  supply  must  meet  the 
demand.  Interest  rates  are  receding;  economies  in  construction 
are  being  introduced,  which  some  time  ago  were  unknown,  largely 
by  the  building  of  houses  by  the  wholesale.  The  large  profits 
which  were  demanded  as  the  normal  income  on  tenement  houses 
in  the  past  are  no  longer  expected.  Rooms  up  to  the  standard  of 
the  modern  tenement  house  law  can  be  provided  without  increasing 
the  rental. 

Another  limitation  in  many  cities  is  the  prevailing  lot  dimen¬ 
sion.  If  Dante  were  to-day  writing  his  “  Inferno,”  the  lowest  depth 
would  be  reserved  for  those  men  who  invented  the  twenty-five  foot 
lot  and  imposed  it  on  so  many  American  cities.  In  unbuilt  dis¬ 
tricts,  where  several  lots,  whatever  be  their  dimensions,  can  be 
purchased  and  built  upon  together,  the  lot  dimension  does  not 
necessarily' control  the  frontage  of  the  building,  and  the  tendency 


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in  such  districts  in  New  York  is  to  build  tenement  houses  of  wider 
frontage,  which  admit  of  better  court  arrangement,  but  there 
are  usually  so  many  lots  separately  owned,  and  so  many  which 
are  situated  between  lots  already  built  upon,  so  that  their  enlarge¬ 
ment  is  impossible,  that  any  proposed  legislation  prescribing  court 
areas  which,  however  desirable,  puts  the  prevailing  lot  unit  at  a 
disadvantage,  will  meet  with  overwhelming  resistance.  No  better 
illustration  of  this  can,  perhaps,  be  found  than  the  story  of  New 
York  legislation  this  wdnter,  of  which  I  intend  to  speak.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  proper  tenement  house  construction,  happy 
that  city  in  which  land  is  sold  by  the  front  foot,  instead  of  by  any 
Procrustean  lot  unit. 

There  is  another  practical  limitation,  not  necessarily  to  the 
enactment  of  tenement  house  law,  but  to  its  permanence,  in  the 
extent  to  which  it,  either  actually  or  supposedly,  interferes  with 
the  profits  of  builders  and  material  men,  and  perhaps  no  better 
illustration  of  this  practical  limitation  can  be  given  than  a  simple 
recital  of  the  contest  over  the  radical  amendment  of  the  New  York 
law  which  has  been  waged  at  Albany  during  the  past  few  weeks, 
and  which  terminated  only  a  few  days  ago.  The  New  York  law 
of  1901  marked  the  longest  step  in  advance  that  tenement  house 
reform  in  that  staTe  has  ever  taken,  though  in  its  provisions  for 
court  areas,  the  particular  point  in  which  it  was  assailed  this  win¬ 
ter,  it  does  not  go  so  far  as  the  Philadelphia  law,  and  but  little 
further  than  the  previous  Buffalo  law.  It  unquestionably  in¬ 
creased  the  cost  of  construction  by  its  fireproof  provisions,  as  well 
as,  though  in  a  less  degree,  by  its  larger  court  areas.  That  there 
would  be,  this  winter,  organized  effort  on  the  part  of  building  and 
real  estate  interests  to  modify  it  was  certain  and  inevitable.  Many 
bills  were  introduced  amending  it,  but  my  illustration  only  con¬ 
cerns  two,  the  City  Administration  bill,  in  the  preparation  of  which 
I  myself  had  part,  and  a  bill  introduced  by  a  Brooklyn  member  of 
the  Legislature  in  the  interest  of  Brooklyn  builders  and  material 
men,  who  claimed  that  they  represented  the  people  of  Brooklyn. 
It  is  a  fair  question  whether  Brooklyn  did  not  really  have  a  griev¬ 
ance  against  last  winter’s  law.  One  of  the  prevailing  types  of 
Brooklyn  tenements  is  a  three-story  house  on  a  twenty-five  foot 
lot,  with  two  families  on  a  floor,  making  six  families  in  all,  each 
apartment  running  through  from  front  to  rear.  These  houses  had 
been  built  with  interior  courts  or  air-shafts  about  two  and  a  half 


Tenement  House  Regulation 


93 


feet  wide  and  ten  feet  long.  These  light-shafts  were  supposed  to 
light  and  ventilate  the  interior  rooms  of  each  apartment.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  they  furnished  little  light  or  ventilation  to  any  bed¬ 
rooms  below  the  top  floor.  The  same  type  of  air-shaft  in  taller 
tenements  of  Manhattan  was  one  of  the  chief  evils  against  which 
the  new  law  was  directed.  These  evils  were  undoubtedly  less  in  a 
three-story  building,  but  still  existed.  The  minimum  interior 
court  or  air-shaft  permitted  by  the  new  law  in  such  buildings  was 
eleven  feet  wide  by  twenty-two  feet  long.  Such  a  court  prevented 
the  building  of  this  type  of  house,  and  no  tenements  of  this  type 
were  consequently  built  on  twenty-five  foot  lots  from  the  time  when 
the  law  went  into  effect.  The  Brooklyn  bill  sought  to  amend  the 
law,  as  respects  three  and  four-story  houses,  by  permitting  a  return 
to  the  old  air-shaft,  with  an  increased  width  of  six  inches,  and  with 
a  somewhat  increased  length,  making  it  three  by  twelve.  We 
conceded  that  under  the  law  it  was  impossible  to  build  this  par¬ 
ticular  type  of  tenement  on  a  twenty-five  foot  lot,  with  each  apart¬ 
ment  running  through  from  front  to  rear,  but  we  demonstrated 
that  it  was  perfectly  practicable  to  build  what  seemed  to  us  a  much 
better  two-families-on-a-floor  tenement  on  such  a  lot,  by  putting 
one  apartment  in  the  front  and  another  in  the  rear;  that  it  was 
perfectly  practicable  to  build,  under  the  law,  apartments  running 
through  from  front  to  rear  on  a  somewhat  larger  lot,  and  that  the 
law  interfered  with  no  other  current  type  except  the  one  in  ques¬ 
tion.  The  separate  front  and  rear  apartments,  which  were  prac¬ 
tical  under  the  new  law,  are  usual  in  Manhattan,  and  the  rent 
obtainable  from  the  front  apartment  differs  but  little  from  that 
obtainable  from  the  rear  apartment.  Our  Brooklyn  friends  in¬ 
sisted  that  though  Brooklyn  was  a  borough  of  New  York  and  only 
separated  from  Manhattan  by  the  East  River,  Brooklyn  people 
were  so  accustomed  to  apartments  running  through  from  front  to 
rear  that  they  would  not  rent  rear  apartments,  and  indeed,  that 
the  social  distinction  between  families  who  could  afford  to  live  in 
the  front  apartment,  and  those  who  would  be  forced  to  live  in  the 
rear  apartment,  was  so  great  that  they  would  not  rent  apartments 
in  the  same  house. 

This  proposition  may  seem  strained,  but  we  of  the  City  Ad¬ 
ministration  were  finally  satisfied  that  so  much  regard  should  be 
paid  to  local  habits  and  customs,  that  it  was  wise  to  modify  our 
minimum  court  areas  in  three-story  houses  to  such  a  point  as  would 


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permit  the  building  of  this  particular  type  of  Brooklyn  house. 
Plans  were  then  made  which  demonstrated  beyond  peradventure 
that  by  reducing  the  minimum  court  area  to  8x14,  instead  of 
3x12,  this  particular  type  of  house  could  be  built,  with  bedrooms 
infinitely  better  lighted  and  better  ventilated  than  those  opening 
upon  the  narrow  shaft.  One  would  have  supposed  that  this  im¬ 
proved  plan,  which  permitted  Brooklyn  builders  to  construct  a 
front-to-rear  apartment,  for  which  they  claimed  so  many  advan¬ 
tages,  would  have  been  received  with  acclamation  as  a  solution  of 
the  difficulty.  Not  at  all.  Some  insisted  that  Brooklyn  must 
have  what  it  was  accustomed  to,  narrow  air-shaft  and  all.  Others 
more  openminded,  while  frankly  admitting  that  the  new  plans 
made  better  apartments,  which  should  bring  in  an  increased  rental 
of  from  fifty  cents  to  a  dollar  a  month,  insisted  that  tenants  would 
not  pay  more  rent,  and  that  because  the  buildings  under  these  new 
plans  cost  say  $800  per  house  more  than  under  the  old  plans,  they 
would  not  be  commercially  profitable,  and  therefore  would  not  be 
built.  Not  a  word  was  said  as  to  the  interests  of  tenement  dwell¬ 
ers.  There  was  no  dearth  of  apartments  in  Brooklyn  at  current- 
rents.  Indeed,  the  supply  was  far  beyond  the  demand.  The 
whole  issue  turned  on  the  commercial  profitableness  of  building 
under  the  law,  as  amended  by  the  City  Administration  bill,  to  meet 
this  Brooklyn  condition.  The  Brooklyn  builders  were  perfectly 
frank  in  their  arguments.  They  started  with  the  premise  that  the 
building  of  tenements  in  Brooklyn  must  be  made  commercially 
profitable;  that  buildings  under  the  new  plan,  with  a  minimum 
court  area  of  8x14,  would  not  be  commercially  profitable,  because 
about  $800  was  added  to  their  cost,  and  therefore  insisted  that  the 
law  should  be  amended  to  meet  their  ideas  of  commercial  profit¬ 
ableness.  That  the  purpose  of  the  law^  was  not  to  promote  building 
operations,  or  increase  the  value  of  real  estate,  but  to  provide 
healthy  habitation  for  tenement  dwellers,  and  that  that  purpose 
was  certainly  being  accomplished  under  the  new  law  so  long  as 
tenement  dwellers  could  house  themselves  without  any  increase 
in  rent,  was  ignored,  nor  if  it  had  been  urged  would  it  have  seemed 
to  them  an  argument  worth  considering. 

I  am  happy  to  say  that  they  did  not  succeed,  but  they  demon¬ 
strated  the  influence  which  can  be  exerted  upon  the  average  legis¬ 
lator  by  men  of  their  type  through  their  trade  and  allied  labor 
organizations,  and  had  those  who,  at  the  moment,  represented  the 


Tenement  House  Regulation  95 

unorganized  public  in  the  cities  been  less  active,  and  had  the  force 
of  public  opinion  as  voiced  by  the  press  Deen  less  outspoken,  the 
result  might  have  been  different. 

The  advance  of  tenement  house  reform  undoubtedly  means 
some  diminution  in  the  profit  of  the  landlord,  or  some  increase  in 
rent.  Improved  tenements  must  cost  more.  Someone  must  pay 
that  cost.  If  any  material  rise  in  rents  would  produce  such  opposi¬ 
tion  to  the  law  as  to  repeal  or  modify  it,  then  either  the  cost  must 
be  borne  by  the  landlord,  or  the  law  must  be  modified.  Whether 
the  landlord’s  rent  will  by  the  law  proposed  in  any  city  be  dimin¬ 
ished  below  the  point  of  legitimate  profit,  cannot  be  certainly 
demonstrated  until  the  experiment  be  tried.  Some  enlightened 
landlords,  with  a  sense  of  their  obligations  toward  their  tenants, 
are  perfectly  willing  to  suffer  this  small  diminution  of  income. 
Others  are  not,  and  the  others,  who  usually  constitute  the  majority, 
in  alliance  with  the  builders  and  material  men,  will  always  seek  to 
prevent  legislation  which  affects  their  pockets.  Tenement  house 
reform  must  always  be  militant,  not  only  to  gain  ground,  but  to 
hold  the  ground  that  has  once  been  gained. 

There  is  something  for  almost  everyone  to  do.  Let  none  sup¬ 
pose  that  our  cities,  however  small,  will  remain  free  from  the  evils 
of  the  tenement  house,  which  in  larger  cities  has  necessarily  evolved 
in  self-protection  tenement  house  regulation.  The  tenement  has 
come  to  the  United  States,  like  the  Canada  thistle,  to  grow  and  to 
multiply.  The  smaller  cities  need  not  go  through  the  bitter  ex¬ 
perience  which  is  teaching  New  York  and  other  cities  their  lesson. 
They  can,  by  timely  regulation,  prevent  the  crystallization  of  un¬ 
sanitary  conditions  into  brick  and  mortar.  I  do  not  recommend  the 
adoption  in  every  city  of  the  New  York  law.  It  was  framed  to 
meet  the  special  conditions  there  existent.  The  remedy  should 
be  no  greater  than  the  prevailing  or  expected  disease  warrants.  A 
few  elementary  regulations  with  regard  to  court  areas,  vacant 
spaces,  and  regular  and  official  inspection  to  make  certain  that 
these  simple  regulations  are  followed  in  construction  and  that 
ordinary  sanitary  rules  are  complied  with  in  maintenance,  will 
suffice,  if  there  always  be  a  keen  eye  to  look  some  years  ahead,  to 
meet  future  needs  before  they  make  themselves  unpleasantly  miani- 
fest  in  your  own  surroundings,  and  before  conditions  are  created, 
as  in  New  York,  which  cannot  be  changed  except  at  great  cost  to 
owners  and  to  the  municipality. 


The  Housing  Problem  in  Chicago 

By  Miss  Jane  Addams,  Hull  House,  Chicago 


(97) 


THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM  IN  CHICAGO 


By  Miss  Jane  Addams 
Hull  House,  Chicago 

In  considering  the  housing  problem  in  Chicago,  it  is  at  once 
evident  that  we  are  not  in  the  deplorable  condition  of  New  York, 
nor  yet  perhaps  in  the  happy  condition  of  Philadelphia.  Until  a 
year  and  a  half  ago,  we  thought  that  all  our  problems  in  connection 
with  the  housing  question  were  in  the  future.  We  have  a  way  in 
Chicago  of  shoving  disagreeable  problems  into  the  future,  and  say¬ 
ing  that  we  will  take  care  of  them  by  and  by,  when  our  resources  are 
more  adequate,  when  we  have  developed  a  little  more  civic 
consciousness.  An  association  of  people,  however,  called  the  City 
Homes  Association,  some  eighteen  months  ago,  made  a  very  care¬ 
ful  investigation  of  such  tenement  districts  as  we  have  and  their 
report  was  startling,  even  to  those  of  us  who  knew  something  of  the 
conditions  by  daily  seeing  them. 

The  time  at  the  disposal  of  the  committee  was  only  six  months, 
and  Chicago  is  very  large  as  to  area.  We  have  187  square  miles 
under  city  management,  and  the  tenement  houses,  certainly  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  legal  definition  given  by  Mr.  De  Forest,  are  scattered 
more  or  less  through  that  very  large  region.  It  seemed,  therefore, 
better  to  take  three  districts,  limiting  carefully  the  area  of  the 
districts,  and  to  make  as  careful  a  study  as  possible  of  each. 
The  largest  one,  in  two  of  the  river  wards  of  Chicago,  was 
mainly  occupied  by  Italian  immigrants  and  Russian  Jews.  The 
second  in  size  was  the  Polish  district  northeast  of  the  business 
quarter  of  the  city,  and  the  third  in  size  the  Bohemian  district 
extended  south  from  the  centre.  We  discovered  several  things 
which  were  very  surprising,  among  them  that  many  of  the  houses 
were  owned  or  partially  owned  by  the  people  living  in  them.  The 
thrifty  Bohemian  put  his  savings  into  a  house,  perhaps  build¬ 
ing  at  first  a  house  on  the  front  of  his  lot,  living  in  a  few  rooms, 
and  so  saving  rent  until  he  had  enough  money  to  build  a  rear  tene¬ 
ment,  in  the  end  covering  up  his  lot  as  much  as  possible  and  renting 
it  all  out.  The  Italians  to  a  somewhat  lesser  extent  did  the  same 
thing,  and  the  Poles  also,  so  that  one  could  not  talk  of  the  effect  of 

'  (99) 


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The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy 


tenement  house  regulation  upon  the  landlord  in  contradistinction 
to  the  effect  upon  the  tenant,  for  it  is  very  largely  the  neighbors 
of  the  tenants  themselves  who  are  the  landlords,  and  the  tenant  and 
landlord  are  represented  by  the  same  type  of  person.  Their  inter¬ 
ests  are  identical,  not  in  the  larger  sense,  but  in  the  immediate 
sense,  and  they  stand  together  either  in  demanding  or  opposing 
certain  regulations.  The  situation  is  quite  unlike  that  obtaining 
in  the  cities  where  the  landlord  lives  in  some  other  part  of  the  town, 
and  where  tenement  legislation  affects  only  his  property  interests 
and  not  his  human  interests. 

We  also  were  very  much  surprised  at  the  density  in  certain 
quarters  which  this  investigation  disclosed.  If  the  average  tene¬ 
ment  house  density  of  the  three  districts  investigated  were  spread 
throughout  the  city,  we  could  house  within  our  borders  23,000,000 
people.  We  discovered  one-seventh  of  an  acre  which  was  occupied 
to  the  ratio  of  900  people  to  the  acre,  and  if  that  density  were 
applied  to  our  borders  we  could  house,  not  very  comfortably  to  be 
sure,  all  the  people  of  the  Western  Hemisphere.  This  seemed  to 
us  sufficiently  alarming  in  a  city  in  which  it  was  said  that  the 
matter  of  density  was  something  concerning  only  the  future.  The 
average  tenancy  in  the  houses  throughout  these  three  districts 
was  only  three  families  to  a  house.  This  average  means  that  in 
many  cases  there  is  no  real  tenement,  but  a  single  house.  Again, 
many  of  these  single  houses  were  very  small,  sometimes  containing 
but  two  or  three  rooms,  and  the  average  number  of  rooms  to  an 
apartment  was  3  1 16-1000.  Although  many  houses  were  small 
and  the  tenements  for  each  house  again  small,  in  certain  quarters 
the  density  within  the  houses  was  very  great  and  the  conditions 
bad.  We  also  found  in  these  three  areas  almost  a  hundred  full- 
fledged  double-deckers,  and  a  great  many  more  that  only  escaped 
being  double-deckers  through  a  mere  technicality  in  the  definition 
that  had  been  settled  upon.  These  double-deckers  are  growing  and, 
unless  we  have  a  more  vigorous  enforcement  of  tenement  house 
regulations  in  Chicago,  threaten  to  become  very  common  there. 

In  both  the  building  department  and  in  the  health  department 
of  the  city,  a  great  deal  is  left  to  the  discretion  of  the  inspector. 
Of  course,  in  the  city  where  the  landlord  not  only  owns  his  house  but 
also  lives  in  it  and  at  least  knows  which  way  his  tenants  vote,  this 
matter  of  discretionary  power  becomes  an  important  one.  It  is 
very  hard  for  an  official  to  stand  out  against  a  certain  amount  of 


The  Housing  Problem  in  Chicago 


lOI 


political  pressure,  and  the  consequence  is,  that  while  there  are  laws 
fairly  good  on  books,  this  large  discretion  left  to  the  enforcing 
officers  has  made  many  of  them  of  little  account.  This  is  especially 
true  in  regard  to  the  yard  spaces,  which  are  set  between  the  front 
and  rear  tenements,  the  size  of  the  shafts,  and  other  special  regula¬ 
tions.  The  City  Homes  Association  is  trying  at  present  to  secure 
a  better  code  of  tenement  house  legislation,  to  restrict  the  discre¬ 
tionary  power  and  thus  to  limit  the  very  casual  and  varying 
judgment  of  the  enforcing  official,  and  to  give  some  sturdy  stand¬ 
ard  in  law  observances. 

In  the  matter  of  rents,  Chicago  is  in  rather  a  curious  state. 
The  property  in  the  river  wards,  in  which  many  of  these  houses  are 
situated,  has  been  held  for  a  long  time  by  its  owners  upon  the 
theory  that  finally  factories  and  shipping  interests  were  going  to 
occupy  the  land.  The  consequence  is,  that  the  little  houses  which 
were  built  very  soon  after  the  fire  have  been  allowed  to  remain, 
without  very  much  repair  and  without  very  much  change, 
and  in  many  cases  have  become  so  wretched  that  only  a  low 
rental  can  be  asked  for  them.  The  men  who  own  them,  con¬ 
tent  themselves  with  getting  out  of  the  houses  about  enough 
to  pay  taxes  and  to  keep  up  a  minimum  amount  of  repairs  So 
that  the  rent  of  certain  houses  in  the  river  districts  is  low.  Per¬ 
haps  this  is  not  low  for  Philadelphia,  although  I  am  sure  it  will 
sound  low  for  New  York.  The  average  rent  paid  by  an  Italian 
family  for  an  apartment  is  $4.92  a  month,  or  $1.78  per  room  a 
month;  the  average  rent  paid  by  a  Bohemian  family  for  an  apart¬ 
ment  is  $5.93  a  month,  or  $1.64  a  room;  by  a  Polish  family  $5.66 
for  an  apartment,  and  $1.40  for  a  room;  by  a  Jewish  family  $8.28; 
the  average  rent  rising  to  $2.12  a  room.  Whenever  the  question 
of  modern  tenements  comes  up  in  Chicago,  and  the  cost  is  carefully 
gone  into,  it  is  found  very  difficult  to  furnish  apartments  in  good, 
satisfactorily  well-built  houses  at  so  low  a  rental,  and  yet  once  this 
rental  has  been  established,  it  is  found  on  the  other  hand  very 
difficult  to  ask  much  more  than  the  current  rate.  By  a  strict 
enforcement  of  law  many  of  these  houses  should  be  demolished. 
That  would  rid  the  city  of  a  number  of  unsanitary  houses  and 
bring  conditions  to  a  more  normal  situation. 

What  Mr.  De  Forest  says  about  the  twenty-five  foot  lot,  I 
should  very  much  like  to  corroborate.  It  is  very  difficult  to  erect 
a  convenient  house  on  a  lot  25  feet  wide  and  120  feet  deep.  This 


102 


The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy 


unfortunate  division  of  property  was  made  in  the  first  instance, 
doubtless,  to  enable  as  many  men  as  possible  to  own  their  own 
separate  houses.  For  a  long  time  we  have  made  a  sort  of  fetich  of 
the  house,  and  have  come  to  believe  that  a  man  has  a  sense  of  being 
at  home  only  when  he  is  within  four  walls  standing  alone  upon  one 
piece  of  ground.  In  reality  the  idea  of  a  home  reaches  back  so 
much  further  than  the  four  walls,  and  is  so  much  more  deeply 
implanted  in  the  human  breast  than  the  ownership  of  land  that  we 
do  not  need  to  fear  that  a  new  type  of  house  will  destroy  it.  But 
w’'e  are  timid  and  would  rather  be  uncomfortable  in  a  little  house 
than  to  start  out  in  some  reasonable  way  in  building  apartments. 
If  one  has  a  house  i2>^  feet  wide  and  24  feet  deep  and  24  feet  high, 
one  has  not  a  very  comfortable  arrangement.  It  is  not  even 
rationally  divided,  but  by  a  purely  imitative  method ;  in  every  house 
you  enter  you  will  find  the  little  hall,  the  little  stairs,  and  all  the 
other  things  that  presuppose  plenty  of  space.  If  that  same  strip 
of  twelve  feet  had  been  added  to  the  other  strips  in  the  block  and 
the  whole  treated  in  some  reasonable  manner,  we  could  comfortably 
house  the  same  number  of  people  in  a  sort  of  glorified  tenement 
house  or  apartment  house ;  each  family  might  have  at  least  one  large 
living-room  where  the  members  could  get  together  in  comfort  and 
have  a  much  better  chance  for  conserving  family  life  than  they  have 
in  the  little  square  box.  Some  of  us  still  believe  that  a  workingman 
has  a  sense  of  ownership  only  w*hen  he  puts  his  savings  into  a  piece 
of  ground  or  the  house  in  which  he  lives.  To  tie  a  workman  down  to 
a  given  piece  of  ground  is  often  of  questionable  good.  A  man  may 
put  all  his  savings  into  a  house  on  the  North  Side  of  Chicago,  for 
instance,  and  before  it  is  paid  for,  find  himself  out  of  work;  his  next 
work  may  be  fifteen  miles  from  that  place,  in  South  Chicago.  If 
his  house  is  partially  paid  for,  it  is  very  difficult  to  get  rid  of  it,  and 
it  is  also  difficult  and  expensive  to  travel  fifteen  miles  twice  a  day. 
If  his  property  had  been  in  some  other  form,  let  us  say  stocks  or 
bonds,  it  would  have  allowed  him  much  more  mobility  in  regard  to 
his  labor,  and  he  would  have  a  better  chance  of  adjusting  himself 
to  the  changing  conditions  of  his  trade. 

A  Housing  Conference,  it  seems  to  me,  ought  first  of  all  to  look 
at  industrial  conditions  as  they  confront  the  workingman  of  to-day, 
not  as  conditions  existed  fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago,  nor  as  they 
existed  for  our  fathers.  A  conference  should  not  consider  the 
workingman  of  its  imagination,  nor  yet  the  workingman  as  he 


The  Hciising  Problem  in  Chicago  103 

ought  to  be,  but  the  workingman  of  to-day  as  he  finds  himself, 
with  his  family,  with  his  savings,  with  his  difficulty  of  keeping  a 
place  very  long,  due  to  the  sudden  changes  in  the  methods  of  his 
trade.  His  employer  is  obliged  to  make  constant  changes  and  adap¬ 
tations  in  his  factory,  but  his  landlord  is  afraid  to  try  changes  in  his 
house.  We  hold  a  certain  fiction  in  our  minds  of  what  home  is 
and  what  it  ought  to  be,  forgetting  how  far  back  it  goes,  that  it 
can  survive  all  sorts  of  changes  and  adaptations,  that  the  one  thing 
which  will  kill  it  is  that  which  kills  every  living  thing,  i.  e. ,  lack  of 
adaptation  to  its  environment ;  if  it  fails  to  adapt  itself  to  the  situa¬ 
tion  as  it  really  exists,  it  is  for  the  first  time  endangered.  If  the 
community,  as  a  whole,  gives  its  mind  to  it,  as  the  Philadelphia 
community  seems  to  be  doing,  and  knows  conditions  accurately 
and  thoroughly,  I  am  sure  we  are  going  to  see  very  marked  changes 
in  the  housing  of  the  poorer  people  of  the  modern  cities,  and  we 
shall  no  more  cling  to  the  single  house  than  to  the  country  store. 
The  time  may  come,  when,  if  in  any  city,  the  death-rate  rises  above 
the  normal,  that  the  body  of  public-spirited  citizens  shall  at  once 
feel  forced  to  do  something  about  it,  that  they  shall  be  filled  with  a 
sense  of  disgrace  and  feel  that  a  disaster  has  occurred  in  their  city. 
At  the  present  moment  the  death-rate  is  constantly  above  the 
normal,  in  certain  quarters  of  our  cities;  we  allow  it  to  be  high  year 
after  year,  knowing  that  it  is  excessive.  This  apathy  can  only  be 
explained  on  one  of  two  grounds,  either  that  we  do  not  know  the 
housing  conditions  which  exist,  or  that  we  are  so  selfish  as  to  have 
no  sense  of  responsibility  in  regard  to  them. 


Discussion  of  the  Papers  Read  by  Miss  Addams  and  Mr. 

De  Forest: 

“Q.  Is  the  discretion,  which  Miss  Addams  says  is  abused  in 
Chicago  to  such  an  extent,  exercised  with  regard  to  the  legal  court 
area  which  should  be  left  unoccupied  by  the  building? 

“A.  (Miss  Addams),  I  would  reply,  yes,  that  buildings  are 
permitted  to  go  up  with  lesser  court  areas  than  provided  by  law. 
The  matter  is  so  largely  in  the  hands  of  the  office  giving  the  per¬ 
mit  that  almost  every  provision  is  changed.  I  think  we  found 
in  this  investigation  houses  which  illustrated  the  encroachment 
upon  and  the  breaking  of  every  single  ordinance  found  upon  the 
statute  books,  in  regard  to  the  shaft  area  as  well  as  other  provisions, 


104  Aimals  of  the  America?i  Academy 

“Q.  I  cannot  see  why  the  figures  mentioned  should  be  unduly 
low  for  the  rent  per  room  per  month,  or  should  be  too  low  to  permit 
a  reasonable  profit  to  the  owner  of  property.  I  have  rented  a  six- 
room  house  in  Washington,  around  the  corner  from  one  of  the  best 
residence  districts,  for  $3.50  per  room  per  month;  furnished  rooms 
in  New  York,  near  Columbia  University,  for  $2.00  a  week,  and 
downtown,  near  the  business  part  of  the  city,  for  $1.50,  furnished, 
with  attendance.  I  wonder  if  Mr.  De  Forest  can  tell  us  what,  under 
modem  conditions  in  New  York  City,  for  example,  should  be  a  fair 
rent  which  would  enable  a  landlord  to  get  a  fair  profit  on  the  in¬ 
vestment  per  room  per  month. 

“A.  (Mr  De  Forest),  In  New  York,  rents  are,  I  think,  on  a 
business  basis.  In  other  words,  I  do  think  the  landlords  expect  to 
receive,  and  do  receive  from  their  tenements  a  normal  income,  and 
in  many  instances  more  than  a  normal  income.  The  modern 
tenements  which  are  being  put  up  by  the  City  and  Suburban 
Homes  Company  of  New  York,  which  are  now  being  increased  in 
number,  do  produce  a  fair  income,  representing  not  less  than  4 
per  cent  on  the  money  invested.  I  refer  to  the  buildings  con¬ 
structed  at  the  present  time  under  the  modem  requirements  of  the 
state  law. 

“Q.  The  Washington  Sanitary  Improvement  Company  paid  5 
per  cent  from  the  very  beginning  and  rents  its  flats  for  about  $3.00 
per  room  per  month.  The  buildings  are  one  to  three  stories  high. 

“A.  Land  is  considerably  higher  in  Washington.  This  land 
is  not  less  than  $150,  and  usually  $200  a  foot.  The  price  quoted 
lowest  was  $1.78  per  room  per  month,  whereas  your  price  was 
$2.00  a  week,  for  New  York;  $3.00  and  $3.50  per  month  for 
Washington. 

“  Q.  We  have  heard  this  question  from  the  standpoint  of  Chi¬ 
cago,  New  York  and  Philadelphia,  but  the  clientele  of  this  associa¬ 
tion,  as  I  understand  it,  covers  the  entire  country,  and  I  should 
like  to  ask  ^Ir.  De  Forest  whether  it  is  not  tme  that  the  investiga¬ 
tion  made  by  the  Tenement  House  Commission  of  New  York  dis¬ 
closed  the  fact  that  in  virtually  every  manufacturing  city  of  the 
country  there  is  to-day  distinctly  a  housing  problem  for  the  poor  and 
that  definite  constructive  work  needs  to  be  done  to  remedy  the  evils. 

“A.  The  investigation  made  by  the  Tenement  House  Com¬ 
mission  which  covered  all  the  large  cities,  and  some  of  the  smaller 
ones  of  the  country,  includes  statistics  from  twenty  selected  cities. 


The  Housing  Problem  in  Chicago 


105 


It  is  true  that  the  tenement  house  problem  presents  itself  in  a  much 
less  degree  in  some  places  than  in  others ;  it  does  so  to  a  much  less 
extent  in  Philadelphia.  In  other  large  cities  of  the  country  the 
housing  problem  exists  to  a  large  extent,  and  so  much  so  in  some 
of  the  smaller  cities  that  last  winter  the  cities  of  the  second  class  in 
New  York  State — Syracuse,  Utica,  Albany  and  Rochester — 'took  up 
the  problem  of  regulation  in  these  cities.  Jersey  City,  which  is 
directly  opposite  New  York,  and  which  is  a  comparatively  small 
city,  has  some  of  the  worst  housing  conditions  in  the  whole  country. 

“  Q.  About  how  large  a  proportion  of  the  population  is  affected 
by  the  housing  problem  in  New  York? 

“A.  The  total  population  of  New  York  is  about  3,400,000. 
Out  of  that  population  upwards  of  2,200,000  live  in  tenement 
houses,  as  legally  defined,  which  includes  apartment  houses. 
The  proportion  in  Brooklyn  is  quite  as  large  as  in  New  York, 
although  there  is  a  smaller  number  of  families  per  house. 

“Q.  What  is  a  double-decker? 

“A.  (Miss  Addams),  The  double-decker  was  originally,  of 
course,  a  house,  which  grew  from  the  fact  that  there  was  a  front 
tenement  and  a  rear  tenement,  and  that  later  the  two  were  joined 
into  one  house. 

“Q.  I  would  like  to  ask  Miss  Addams  as  to  Chicago  and  Mr. 
De  Forest  as  to  Brooklyn,  whether  any  notice  has  been  taken  of 
the  question  as  to  the  best  pavement  for  the  poor  sections  of  the 
city,  that  is,  whether  asphalt  for  the  lanes  and  alleys  is  not,  as  a 
rule,  cleaner  in  appearance  and  in  other  ways,  than  other  kinds  of 
paving,  as  cobblestone,  for  instance. 

“A.  (Miss  Addams),  I  will  ask  Mr,  De  Forest  to  answer  that. 
Paving  is  a  weak  point  in  Chicago. 

“A.  (Mr.  De  Forest),  Perhaps  I  ought  to  say  that  I  am  glad  to 
find  some  point  on  which  New  York  has  something  to  say.  Most 
of  our  congested  tenement  districts  in  New  York,  largely  on  the 
East  Side,  have  been  paved  with  asphalt.  This  is  regarded  as  a 
matter  of  grave  importance,  and  was  one  of  the  subjects  consid¬ 
ered  by  the  Tenement  House  Commission;  that  in  some  districts 
there  should  be  asphalt  pavements,  because  the  families  almost 
live  in  the  streets  in  summer  and  the  children  all  play  there,  was 
one  consideration,  and  keeping  the  streets  clean  was  another  of 
great  importance. 

“Q.  Do  you  think  that  the  facilitation  of  the  workingman 


io6  The  Annals  of  the  Ameidcan  Academy 

in  change  of  residence,  either  within  metropolitan  borders,  or  from 
one  city  to  another,  or  from  one  state  to  another,  is  a  good  thing 
in  contemplation  of  his  privileges  and  duties  as  an  American 
citizen  ? 

“A.  I  think  that  in  industry,  as  it  is  now  organized,  with 
the  sudden  changes  and  fluctuations  of  skill,  if  the  workman  is 
deprived  of  the  power  to  sell  his  labor,  it  is  very  bad  for  him. 

s 

Then  I  think  the  adaptable  person  is  a  better  American  citizen 
than  a  person  who  is  planted  too  hard. 

“Q.  Are  you  not,  therefore,  regarding  only  the  rights  and  the 
good  that  may  be  done  to  the  individual,  eliminating  altogether 
his  obligations  as  a  citizen  ? 

“A.  What  I  wanted  to  say  was  this,  that  I  think  we  have  a 
way  of  relegating  all  the  old-fashioned  virtues  to  workingmen  and 
reserving  to  ourselves  the  most  interesting  and  more  adaptable 
virtues.  We  say  to  our  workmen,  do  not  drink,  be  thrifty  and  in¬ 
dustrious.  These  are  good  but  negative.  We  reserve  to  ourselves 
the  power  of  developing  an  interesting  life,  and  all  the  rest  of  it. 
On  general  principles,  if  a  man  can  stay  in  one  place  and  own  his 
house,  of  course  it  is  better  for  him  both  from  a  financial  and  social 
point  of  view;  but  there  are  exceptions,  and  we  all  know  that  the 
present  industrial  conditions  imply  constant  change  both  in 
methods  and  place  of  manufacture,  that  if  we  really  understood 
the  workingman’s  needs  and  were  trying  to  serve  him,  we  would 
evolve  some  such  plan  as  has  been  evolved  in  Belgium.  A  man 
there  puts  his  savings  into  the  Government  Savings  Bank,  which 
has  all  the  features  of  a  building  and  loan  association.  As  I 
understand  it,  he  may  make  partial  payments  upon  a  house  in 
Brussels,  but  if  his  work  takes  him  away  from  that  city  to  another 
within  the  kingdom — -let  us  say  Ghent — ^he  may  transfer  his  pay¬ 
ments  to  a  house  in  Ghent.  On  the  other  hand  he  may  remain 
in  Brussels,  complete  his  payments  until  he  owns  his  house  or 
withdraw  his  stock  in  his  owm  house,  after  allowing  for  proper 
depreciation,  and  hold  his  savings  in  simple  bank  stock.  The 
entire  arrangement  is  flexible  and  adaptable,  and  transfers  the 
sense  of  ownership  from  the  simple  ownership  of  land  and  house, 
to  the  more  complex  one  of  stock. 

“Q.  Regarding  gardens,  playgrounds  and  gymnasiums,  which, 
in  some  sections  of  Philadelphia — namely,  the  College  Settlement — 
have  been  located  on  the  tops  of  buildings  for  the  benefit  of  children, 
has  that  been  done  in  Xew  York  and  Chicago,  and  with  what  success? 


The  Housing  Problem  in  Chicago 


107 


“A.  I  should  say,  yes,  so  far  as  the  movement  has  gone, 
that  is  with  regard  to  open  .playgrounds,  not  speaking  of  roof 
gardens,  and  with  regard  to  open  parks.  The  small  park  move¬ 
ment  has  undoubtedly  done  a  great  deal  of  good,  and  the  children's 
playground,  so  far  as  it  has  gone.  It  has  not  gone  to  the  extent  that 
its  friends  desire.  So  far  as  roof  gardens  are  concerned,  that  is, 
the  adoption  of  roofs  for  recreation,  that  has  not  been  done  so  far 
as  I  know.  It  has  been  thought  of  and  talked  of,  but  never 
carried  out." 


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CERTAIN  ASPECTS  OF  THE  HOUSING  PROBLEM  IN 

PHILADELPHIA 


Report  Prepared  by  the  Octavia  Hill  Association 


The  work  of  the  Octavia  Hill  Association  has  been  one  of 
detailed  management  of  the  houses  of  the  poor  and  not  of  investi¬ 
gation,  but  it  cannot  let  this  opportunity  pass  without  describing 
some  of  the  conditions  known  to  it.  No  comprehensive  report  of 
housing  conditions  in  Philadelphia  has  ever  been  made.  The 
Seventh  Special  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Labor  in  1894  on 
the  Slums  of  Great  Cities  has  interesting  data  on  living  conditions 
at  that  time  in  certain  sections  of  the  slum  districts,  while  “The 
Philadelphia  Negro,”  a  social  study,  by  W.  E.  Burghardt  Dubois, 
published  by  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  in  1899,  throws  a 
vivid  light  on  the  problem  in  its  relation  to  the  colored  population 
of  the  Seventh  Ward.  We  believe  that  the  time  has  come  for 
wider  consideration  of  this  important  subject.  Our  purpose  in 
this  paper  is  to  urge  strongly  the  importance,  if  not  the  necessity, 
of  a  thorough  investigation  and  that  one  may  be  undertaken  in 
the  near  future  before  our  situation  becomes  m.ore  serious. 

Philadelphia  had  in  1900  a  population  of  1,293,697  persons, 
covering  an  area  of  almost  130  square  miles,  with  an  average  den¬ 
sity  of  about  fifteen  persons  to  an  acre.  Of  its  258,690  dwelling- 
houses  more  than  one-half  are  two-story  dwellings,  and  its  average 
number  . of  persons  to  a  dwelling  is  4.91.  These  facts  show  that 
our  problems  differ  radically  from  those  of  New  York  and  Chicago 
and  that  it  is  the  house  built  for  occupation  by  a  single  family  and 
not  the  tenement,  which  is  the  important  feature  for  us  to  con¬ 
sider.  The  excellent  system  which  has  made  Philadelphia  famous 
and  has  given  it  a  larger  proportion  of  separate  dwellings  for  the 
working  classes  than  any  city  of  an  equal  population,  has  blinded 
our  eyes  too  long  to  the  evils  which  have  been  growing  up  about  us. 
Until  within  a  few  years  the  building  law  was  practically  a  dead 
letter,  and  no  check  was  placed  on  the  avarice  of  the  landlord  in  his 
desire  to  gain  the  utmost  possible  return  from  his  ground  space. 
Even  to-day  we  have  no  laws  for  the  enforcement  of  underdrainage 
and  our  municipal  departments  are  unable  with  their  small  force 

(ill) 


I  12 


The  Annals  of  the  America?!  Academy 


of  inspectors  to  cope  with  the  conditions  we  are  facing.  These  facts 
have  given  us  problems  which  though  the  wa}^  to  their  solution  may 
be  plain,  yet  demand  serious  consideration. 

Philadelphia  can  be  justly  proud  of  the  way  in  which  the  needs 
of  the  regularly  employed  wage-earner  have  been  met  by  the  small 
house.  In  the  newer  and  outlying  parts  of  the  city  this  house  is 
found  in  its  best  development.  There  are  rows  upon  rows,  streets 
upon  streets  of  attractive  four  and  six  roomed  houses  with  an  in¬ 
creasing  number  of  modern  conveniences.  Sanitary  plumbing, 
bath,  range,  furnace,  gas,  a  cemented  cellar,  a  porch  and  a  small 
yard  may  be  had  for  from  $15.00  to  $20.00  a  month.  Three  thou¬ 
sand  six  hundred  and  twenty-five  two-story  houses  were  in  1901 
added  to  the  already  large  number  of  these  and  the  Building  and 
Loan  Associations  bear  witness  to  the  continued  demand  and  the 
increase  of  popular  ownership. 

Nearer  to  the  centre  of  the  city  also,  and  in  the  great  mill  and 
factory  districts,  one  finds  still  the  individual  home,  but  here  the 
houses  are  older,  the  rows  seem  longer  and  more  unbroken  in  their 
monotony  and  in  innumerable  courts  and  alleys  there  is  surface 
drainage.  Here,  also,  we  find  the  various  features  of  the  problem 
which  grows  more  difficult  in  the  older  parts  of  the  city  and  as  the 
social  scale  is  lowered.  In  prosperous  times,  each  small  house 
holds  one  family.  In  times  of  industrial  depression  the  house  built 
for  one  family  must  with  no  additional  conveniences,  no  better 
arrangements  for  privacy  and  comfort,  accommodate  two  or  more. 

For  the  purpose  of  this  report  we  have  considered  mainly  the 
district  in  the  southeastern  part  of  the  city  where  our  own  work 
centres. ‘  The  five  wards,  where  this  district  lies,  contain  about 
one-tenth  of  the  population  of  the  city  and  cover  about  one-eight¬ 
ieth  of  the  area  or  one  and  three-fifths  square  miles.  The  average 
density  of  population  in  these  wards  is  123  persons  to  an  acre.  In 
the  Third  Ward  the  average  number  increases  to  209.  The  wards 
are  relatively  well  provided  with  park  area,  but  the  whole  amount 
used  for  this  purpose  is  only  16.88  acres  out  of  a  total  of  1030  acres, 
which  shows  the  crying  need  there  is  for  more  breathing  spaces  in 
these  congested  districts.  There  are  a  number  of  old  graveyards 
which  would  be  valuable  additions  to  the  park  area  if  they  were 
so  used.  The  total  number  of  inhabitants  in  the  five  wards  is 

1  The  five  wards  are  the  Second,  Third,  Fourth,  Fifth  and  Seventh.  One-half  of  the 
Seventh  extends  out  of  the  district  towards  the  west,  but  shows  many  of  the  same  character¬ 
istics. 


The  Housing  Problem  in  Philadelphia  1 1 3 

127,466.  Of  these,  50,733  are  foreign  born,  17,611  are  negroes.  It 
is  impossible  to  attempt  a  description  of  the  many  phases  of  life 
throughout  this  region.  The  large  numbers  of  foreigners  are 
grouped  together  according  to  nationality,  in  fairly  well-defined 
geographical  areas,  each  showing  many  characteristics  of  its  own 
national  life.  The  slum  districts  shift  their  centres  somewhat  in 
the  changing  of  populations,  but  are  seemingly  as  strongly  en¬ 
trenched  as  ever  and  extend  over  increasingly  large  areas.  Archi¬ 
tecturally  the  buildings  show  great  variety.  Quaint,  gabled  frame 
houses  often  in  the  most  dilapidated  condition,  modern  brick 
dwellings,  colonial  houses  of  fine  proportions,  and  tenements  are 
found  side  by  side  often  in  picturesque  proximity. 

The  size  of  the  block  in  Philadelphia  is  an  important  factor 
in  any  consideration  of  its  housing  conditions.  This  block  aver¬ 
ages  about  400  feet  square.  By  the  purpose  of  the  founder  of  the 
city  it  was  intended  that  each  house  should  be  in  the  middle  of  the 
“breadth  of  his  ground,  so  as  to  give  place  to  gardens,  etc.,  such 
as  might  be  a  green  country  towne  which  might  never  be  burnt  and 
might  always  be  wholesome.”  ^  This  large  size  has  continued  to 
be  the  plan  of  the  city  and  has  lent  itself  readily^ to  being  cut  up 
into  the  network  of  inner  courts  and  alleys  which  are  practically 
universal.  The  gardens,  however,  in  all  the  poorer  districts,  have 
totally  disappeared.  The  small  house  has  been  crowded  onto  the 
ground  formerly  allotted  to  them,  and  the  revenue  from  the  land 
has  been  increased  by  an  intensive  process,  which  while  not  build¬ 
ing  into  the  air  has  covered  the  ground  with  large  numbers  of 
dwellings.  It  is  the  limited  height  of  the  buildings  that  is  the 
saving  factor.  If  the  houses  were  high  with  the  consequent  in¬ 
crease  of  overcrowding  to  the  acre,  the  conditions  would  be  ex¬ 
treme. 

From  the  various  types  of  houses  known  to  us  we  have  chosen 
for  special  mention  three  of  those  which  show  most  clearly  the 
character  and  needs  of  this  district.  The  most  striking  of  these 
is  the  occasional  large  tenement.  In  the  early  nineties  the  great 
increase  of  immigration  suggested  the  building  of  tenements  as  a 
profitable  investment.  The  result  was  a  goodly  number  of  scat¬ 
tered  houses,  built  under  the  law  governing  the  building  of  the 
ordinary  dwelling-house  and  showing  some  of  the  worst  phases  of 
tenement  house  construction.  Narrow  air-shafts,  lots  closely  built 

^  Watson’s  Annals,  Vol.  I,  p.  43. 


1 14  The  Annals  of  the  American  Acadeiny 

over,  insufficient  plumbing,  badly  ventilated  and  dark  rooms,  in¬ 
adequate  fire-escapes,  would  if  multiplied  have  thrust  upon  us  a 
problem  of  a  very  serious  form.  These  houses  hold  from  sixteen 
to  fifty  families.  In  many  instances  the  yard  space  is  a  long  narrow 
strip  on  which  all  the  rooms  are  dependent  for  air  and  light  except 
those  on  the  front  of  the  building.  When  the  adjoining  lot  is 
covered  in  the  same  way  the  result  is  a  narrow  well  in  which  sun¬ 
shine  cannot  enter  and  through  which  there  is  no  circulation  of  air. 
In  one  case,  in  a  house  built  on  the  four  sides  of  its  ground,  sixty- 
four  rooms  open  on  such  a  well  which  is  seven  feet  six  inches  in 
width,  while  in  another  instance  a  copy  of  the  New  York  dumb¬ 
bell  plan  is  found.  This  movement  was  fortunately  watched  and 
arrested  in  its  early  development.  Through  the  thoughtful  action 
of  Mr.  Hector  McIntosh  and  with  the  co-operation  of  a  number  of 
prominent  city  officials  and  others,  a  wise  law  was  framed  and 
accepted  by  the  Legislature.  The  evil  was  checked  and  the  build¬ 
ing  of  large  and  badly  arranged  tenements  prevented. 

Under  this  act  of  May  7,  1895,  the  term  tenem.ent  is  defined  as 
meaning  every  building  which  is,  or  is  to  be,  occupied  by  three  or 
more  families,  living  independently  of  each  other  and  doing  their 
cooking  on  the  premises.  The  act  provides  that  not  more  than  80 
per  cent  of  a  lot  can  be  built  on,  except  in  corner  properties,  that 
the  width  of  a  yard  shall  be  not  less  than  eight  feet,  that  every  room 
in  such  houses  shall  have  a  window  opening  upon  a  street  or  upon 
the  yard,  that  every  tenement  house  over  four  stories  high  shall 
be  fireproof,  throughout.  It  has  also  stringent  provisions  in  re¬ 
gard  to  water  supply,  sanitation,  minimum  size  of  rooms,  halls, 
etc.  The  cost  of  building  is  thus  so  much  increased  as  to  be 
almost  prohibitive. 

In  1890  the  percentage  of  families  living  in  tenement  houses 
in  Philadelphia  was  1.44.  Whatever  the  increase  in  this  figure 
may  be  in  the  census  of  1900,^  it  remains  true  that  only  the  poorest 
live  in  one  and  two  rooms,  and  that  as  soon  as  a  higher  rent  can  be 
paid,  or  a  small  house  can  be  had  at  a  low  rent,  the  change  is  eagerly 
made.  The  management  of  all  large  tenements  is  very  difficult,  and 
manifest  evils  are  sure  to  follow  neglect  and  inefficiency  on  the 
part  of  the  owners.  Thus,  in  a  community  containing  so  large  a 
number  of  small  houses,  the  tide  was  turned  from  this  plan  of 


^  The  Second  Volume  of  the  Census  of  1900  is  not  yet  issued. 


The  Housing  Problem  in  Philadelphia  1 1  5 

housing  at  a  critical  moment,  the  results  of  which  are  of  far-reaching 
benefit. 

The  second  class  of  house  which  is  found  prominently  is  that 
built  for  one  family  of  the  better  class  and  now  converted  to  the 
use  of  three  or  more  families  of  the  very  poor.  In  the  history  of 
housing  in  other  cities,  these  houses  have  formed  one  step  in  the 
evolution  of  such  tenements  as  we  have  described.  Here,  they 
form  the  most  important  phase  of  our  tenement  house  problem. 
May  it  not  be  that  b}^  wisely  adapting  them  to  the  needs  of  the 
very  poor  they  can  take  the  place  of  the  larger  tenements  and  give 
to  Philadelphia  the  proud  distinction  of  housing  these  classes  in 
small  buildings,  which  shall  avoid  the  evils  attendant  upon  the 
herding  of  many  families  together,?  At  present,  there  are  large 
numbers  of  houses  of  this  class  in  the  older  parts  of  this  region  and 
a  total  failure  of  any  adaptation  of  the  old  arrangements  to  suit 
the  new  conditions.  The  houses  are  usually  well  built  and  the 
rooms  large  and  well  ventilated,  but  there  is  no  attempt  at  ade¬ 
quate  or  sanitary  plumbing.  The  hydrant  in  the  yard  is  often  the 
only  water  supply  and  there  is  probably  but  one  closet,  also  in  the 
yard,  the  privy  well  of  which  may  be  shared  by  three  adjoining 
houses.  Little  attention  is  given  to  care  or  management.  The 
repairs  are  neglected,  the  stairways  are  dark,  the  halls  obstructed 
by  extra  furniture  and  rubbish.  In  many  cases  the  cellars  are  damp 
and  filthy  and  give  no  provision  for  storage.  The  yards  are  ob¬ 
structed,  there  are  no  arrangements  for  drying  clothes. 

The  law  provides  that  when  buildings  are  altered  into  tene¬ 
ments  certain  provisions  shall  be  enforced,  but  it  makes  no  mention 
of  the  need  for  this  alteration  in  houses  so  used  without  changes, 
nor  does  it  exact  any  such  changes.  The  landlord  of  the  district  is 
keenly  alive  to  the  fact  that  when  alterations  are  to  be  made,  an 
affidavit  that  the  house  is  to  be  used  by  only  two  families  will  pro¬ 
tect  him  from  the  exactions  of  the  tenement  house  law.  A  special 
investigation  into  houses  of  this  class  would  surely  show  how  the 
law  could  be  amended  to  cover  their  defects  and  to  fit  them  at  a 
moderate  expenditure  and  under  good  regulation  to  meet  the  needs 
of  the  newly  arrived  immigrant  and  of  the  very  poor. 

This  type  of  houses  built  for  one  family  and  changed  into  tene¬ 
ments  has  another  and  a  worse  form  when  it  is  used  for  what  is 
known  as  a  “furnished  room  house.”  There  is  a  large,  and  it  is 
believed  a  steadily  increasing,  number  of  these  in  the  older  parts 


1 1 6  TJie  Annals  of  the  American  Academy 

of  the  city  and  where  conditions  have  greatly  deteriorated.  There 
are  no  data  on  which  to  estimate  their  number.  A  thorough  inquiry 
could  be  made  only  with  police  or  other  authority  behind  the 
workers.  These  houses  are  tenements  and  have  all  the  objection¬ 
able  features  of  tenements  in  a  marked  degree,  besides  others  pe¬ 
culiar  to  themselves.  These  features  are  intensified  by  the  char¬ 
acter  of  the  tenants,  who  are  of  the  lowest  class.  Sometimes  the 
houses  are  used  for  immoral  purposes,  and  the  occupants  generally 
are  shiftless,  intemperate  and  slovenly.  Some  few  are  deserving 
families  where  the  breadwinner  is  out  of  work.  Their  conditions 
are  deplorable,  and  they  have  not  even  the  stimulus  to  decent  living 
that  comes  from  the  ownership  of  household  goods.  The  buildings 
are  generally  old,  and  ill-adapted  to  the  number  of  people  crowded 
in  them.  The  rooms  are  rented  by  the  week  at  prices  ranging  from 
$1.50  to  $2.50  per  room.  They  have  the  scantiest  possible  equipment 
of  old  and  dilapidated  furniture.  They  are  dirty  and  unventilated; 
the  beds  and  bedding  indescribable.  Water  is  seldom  found  abuve 
the  ground  floor.  Bath-tubs  are  unknown  or  used  for  storage. 
In  most  cases  there  is  but  one  closet  in  the  yard  for  all  the  tenants 
of  the  house.  The  yards,  as  a  rule,  are  filthy.  There  is  no  appar¬ 
ent  effort  at  cleanliness  or  supervision.  One  room  is  the  ordinary 
rule  for  one  family,  with  frequent  boarders  in  addition.  In  some 
cases  the  large  rooms  have  been  divided  by  flimsy  partitions,  and 
each  half  is  occupied  by  a  family.  The  primary  need  of  these 
houses  is  frequent  and  efficient  inspection.  This  is  more  urgent 
than  in  a  case  of  ordinary  tenements,  as  the  occupants  are  the 
lowest  and  the  poorest,  and  unable  or  unwilling  to  make  any  efforts 
in  their  own  behalf.  In  no  way  can  the  Health  and  Building  De¬ 
partment  regulations  be  enforced,  nor  any  general  improvement 
in  the  condition  of  these  houses  be  effected,  except  by  a  system 
of  periodic  inspection,  followed  by  action  by  the  proper  city  de¬ 
partments.  It  is  entirely  possible  that  a  thorough  investigation 
of  these  houses  made  under  adequate  authority  throughout  the 
city,  wor  ld  show  the  prevalence  of  conditions  warranting  a  systeni 
of  licensing — the  license  to  be  revoked  upon  failure  by  the  land¬ 
lord  to  enforce  reasonable  regulations  as  to  cleanliness,  decency, 
overcrowding,  etc. — in  addition  to  the  present  laws  applying  to  all 
tenement  houses. 

The  third  class  of  houses  to  which  we  would  draw  special 
attention  is  that  of  the  rear  dwelling,  a  small  two  or  thre<e-story 


The  Housing  Pj'oblem  m  Philadelphia  1 1 7 

house,  built  sometimes  singly  and  sometimes  in  rows  of  from  two 
to  eight  or  ten  houses  on  the  rear  of  the  front  house.  This  plan  of 
building  has  been  characterized  as  the  horizontal  rather  than  the 
vertical  tenement.  The  entrance  to  the  row  is  by  a  narrow  passage¬ 
way  from  the  street  or  court.  This  passage-way  is  also  frequently 
the  means  by  which  the  surface  drainage  is  carried  to  the  street  or 
to  an  open  sewer-connection  at  its  entrance.  The  space  in  front 
of  the  houses  is  the  only  yard.  Sometimes  this  space  widens  at  the 
end  of  the  entrance-way  and  there  is  a  double  row  of  dwellings 
facing  each  other  and  covering  the  rears  of  two  or  three  front  lots. 
Sometimes  again  the  open  space  forms  a  square  with  houses  on 
three  sides.  Thus  one  comes  unexpectedly  on  a  little  community 
whose  existence  one  has  not  imagined.  More  often,  however,  the 
narrow  passage-way  runs  the  whole  length  of  the  row  and  in  many 
cases  the  brick  wall  of  an  adjoining  lot  shuts  away  all  air  and  sun¬ 
shine  and  makes  a  prison  of  the  little  court. 

In  a  careful  investigation  made  by  the  college  settlement  into 
the  sanitary  condition  of  one  block  in  its  immediate  neighborhood, 
this  type  of  house  was  strongly  illustrated.  Out  of  a  total  of  196 
houses  in  the  block,  over  90  were  rear  dwellings,  and  but  a  small 
proportion  of  these  was  underdrained.  The  building  of  rear  houses 
is  now  prohibited  by  law.  Such  an  investigation  as  we  ask  for 
would  show  many  localities  where  some  houses  should  be  torn 
down  to  give  light  and  air  to  the  others,  and  other  cases  where  the 
courts  should  be  cut  through  or  entirely  demolished.  Where  the 
conditions  are  good,  however,  these  houses  meet  the  needs  of  the 
very  poor  and  offer  the  advantage  of  an  individual  house,  at  a 
low  rent,  even  though  it  involve  the  common  use  of  yard  space  and 
closet  and  water  conveniences. 

Enough  has  been  said  about  sanitation  to  show  the  great  need 
of  reform.  The  death  rate  is  not  the  only  gauge  of  the  sanitary 
condition  of  the  neighborhood.  It  is  shown  also  in  lowered  vital¬ 
ity  and  poor  health  for  which  there  are  no  statistical  returns. 
The  prevalence  of  surface  drainage  in  Philadelphia  is  very  imper¬ 
fectly  realized.  Of  its  1500  miles  of  streets,  according  to  a  Bulletin 
of  the  Department  of  Labor  in  1901,  there  were  in  that  year  419 
miles  that  were  unpaved,  and  613  miles  without  sewers,  leaving  a 
balance  of  at  least  193  miles  of  paved  streets  without  underdrain¬ 
age.  In  streets  where  drains  have  been  laid,  many  houses  have 
not  been  connected.  The  open  drains  still  run  through  the  great 


1 1 8  The  Amia/s  of  the  American  Academy 

majority  of  alleys,  where  the  decaying  matter  stands  in  the  gutters 
and  when  dried  is  scattered  about  by  the  wind.  Neglected  and 
foul  privy  wells  are  frequently  found.  The  people  are  eager  to 
tell  their  grievances  and  many  are  submitting  patiently  to  intol¬ 
erable  conditions. 

The  most  essential  step  now  to  be  taken  by  the  city  is  sys¬ 
tematic  and  frequent  inspection  of  sanitary  conditions.  If  it  is 
not  possible  to  enforce  underdrainage  at  once,  such  inspection 
would  cause  it  to  be  enforced  where  flagrant  nuisances  exist,  and 
the  moral  influence  of  an  official  would  stimulate  to  better  stand¬ 
ards.  The  Board  of  Health  can  make  but  rare  inspections  on  its 
own  initiative  and  its  small  force  of  twenty  inspectors  of  nuisances 
is  unable  to  respond  promptly  to  the  numbers  of  complaints  made 
to  it.  If  this  force  and  the  force  of  the  Bureau  of  Building  Inspec¬ 
tion  were  largely  increased,  with  added  powers,  the  evils  of 
insanitary  dwellings  and  of  the  evasion  of  the  building  law  could 
be  readily  dealt  with.  There  is  no  large  city  where  these  prob¬ 
lems  could  be  more  easily  solved. 

To  prove  more  fully  the  need  of  such  measures  we  hope  that 
an  investigation  full  enough  to  give  a  comprehensive  knowledge  of 
existing  conditions  may  soon  be  made.  The  results  of  such  an 
investigation  would  not  only  promote  these  reforms,  but  would 
suggest  other  means  of  undoing  the  evils  which  have  arisen  from 
our  long  neglect  and  of  safeguarding  the  future. 

We  have  spoken  thus  far  of  the  need  of  reform  through  legis¬ 
lation  and  the  strengthening  of  the  municipal  departments  whose 
work  is  so  important  in  these  districts.  Such  measures  are  neces¬ 
sary  for  all  classes;  it  is  for  the  very  poor  that  something  more  is 
needed.  The  principle  cannot  be  too  strongly  set  forth  that  it  is 
the  management  of  the  dwellings  of  the  poor,  whether  they  live  in 
courts  or  tenements,  that  is  to  be  the  means  of  securing  to  them 
health  and  comfort,  of  giving  them,  in  reality,  homes.  Miss  Oct  a  via 
Hill  began  in  London  in  1864  the  work  that  was  destined  from  the 
strength  of  its  underlying  principles  to  become  a  significant  factor 
in  dealing  on  these  lines  with  the  housing  problem  in  Europe  and 
also  to  some  extent  in  this  country. 

While  considering  that  the  “spiritual  elevation  of  a  large  class 
depends  to  a  considerable  extent  on  sanitary  reform,”  ‘  Miss  Hill 
believes  also  that  sanitary  improvement  itself  depends  upon  the 

^  “  Homes  of  the  London  Poor,”  by  Octavia  Hill. 


The  Housing  Problem  in  Philadelphia  1 1 9 

educational  work  among  grown-up  people  and  that  this  work  must 
be  effected  by  individual  influence.  It  is  this  influence  in  the 
hands  of  the  landlord  or  his  representative  that  is  so  great  a  power, 
and  can  be  used  either  for  weal  or  woe. 

Miss  Hill’s  plan  is  not  to  tear  down  old  buildings  and  to  begin 
anew,  but  to  improve  existing  conditions  gradually  as  the  tenants 
are  trained  gradually  to  appreciate  and  desire  better  things.  This 
work  is  done  with  the  assistance  of  large  numbers  of  volunteer  rent 
collectors,  each  one  of  whom  is  specially  trained  and  is  given  a 
small  group  of  tenants  to  care  for.  We  quote  from  Miss  Hill  as 
to  the  duties  of  the  collectors:  “We  have  tried  so  far  as  possible 
to  enlist  ladies  who  would  have  an  idea  of  how,  by  diligent  atten¬ 
tion  to  all  business  which  devolves  on  a  landlord,  by  wise  rule  with 
regard  to  all  duties  which  a  tenant  should  fulfill,  by  sympathetic 
and  just  decisions  with  a  view  to  the  common  good,  a  high  stand¬ 
ard  of  management  could  be  obtained.  Repairs  promptly  and 
efficiently  attended  to,  references  carefully  taken  up,  cleaning 
sedulously  supervised,  overcrowding  put  an  end  to,  the  blessing  of 
ready  money  payment  enforced,  accounts  strictly  kept  and,  above 
all,  tenants  so  sorted  as  to  be  helpful  to  one  another.”  The  relation 
thus  established  on  a  basis  of  mutual  obligation  is  one  of  real  and 
often  enduring  helpfulness,  and  the  opportunities  for  service  are 
almost  unlimited. 

Miss  Hill’s  work  has  from  the  first  been  on  a  sound  business 
basis  and  has  given  excellent  financial  returns.  She  has  never 
formed  any  association  of  the  owners  of  the  many  properties  under 
her  care,  or  of  the  workers  who  manage  them.  She  has  felt  that 
the  work  is  freer,  and  more  real  when  thus  untrammeled. 

Many  cities  have  followed  the  example  of  London  in  this  plan 
of  work.  That  of  the  Edinburgh  Social  Union  is  of  unusual  inter¬ 
est.  It  believes,  as  we  must  all  believe,  that  the  “immediate  ques¬ 
tion  to  face  is  how  to  make  the  best  of  present  conditions,  how  to 
raise  the  standard  of  comfort  without  waiting  for  legislative 
changes.”  Its  reports  tell  a  story  of  successful  growth  which  is 
full  of  valuable  and  suggestive  experience. 

In  Philadelphia  the  need  for  the  extension  of  such  work  grov/s 
to  us  stronger  and  more  insistent  as  we  learn  more  of  the  neglected 
places  of  our  city,  of  the  many  streets  and  courts  which  need  such 
influences  as  these.  We  believe  that  this  work  must  grow  and  that 
there  will  come  also  a  more  realizing  sense  of  the  responsibility  of 


120 


The  Annals  of  the  Aniericaii  Academy 


the  community  for  the  welfare  of  its  people.  In  the  wise  control 
of  new  building,  and  of  the  apartment  houses  which  may  be  tene¬ 
ments  in  the  future,  by  planning  for  wide  streets  and  many  open 
spaces,  by  the  awakening  of  higher  civic  standards  we  shall  come 
also  to  a  higher  social  order.  “Victory  over  evil  at  its  source  and 
not  in  its  consequences ;  reforms  which  shall  regard  the  welfare  of 
future  generations,  who  are  the  greatest  number.”  ^ 

Editor’s  Note. — The  Octavia  Hill  Association  is  a  stock  company  or¬ 
ganized  to  improve  living  conditions  in  such  neighborhoods  as  those  described 
in  the  foregoing  paper,  on  lines  similar  to  the  work  of  Miss  Octavia  Hill  in 
London.  Its  aim  is  to  improve  old  houses  and  small  properties  rather  than 
to  build  new  ones.  It  uses  women  rent  collectors,  both  paid  workers  and 
volunteers.  The  Association  was  organized  in  1896  and  has  a  capital  stock 
of  $50,000;  it  has  paid  yearly  dividends  of  4  percent  and  4^  per  cent. 
Its  capital  is  invested  in  houses  which  when  purchased  were  typical  of  the 
classes  above  described.  These  houses  have  been  properly  altered  and 
repaired  and  demonstrate  the  possibility  of  overcoming  such  conditions  and 
yet  receiving  a  fair  financial  return.  The  Association  assumes  also  the 
management  of  property  for  other  owners.  It  has  seventy-seven  houses 
now  under  its  care,  sixty-five  of  which  are  small  houses  for  separate  fami¬ 
lies,  and  twelve  are  tenements  of  a  medium  size,  averaging  elevem  or 
twelve  rooms  each.  The  Association  desires  especially  to  extend  its  work 
of  managing  the  properties  of  other  owners,  believing  that  the  relation 
thus  established  is  stronger  and  more  enduring  than  where  the  ownership  is 
in  a  company.  Its  directors  are : 

Nathaniel  B.  Crenshaw,  President,  Girard  Trust  Company,  Broad  and 
Chestnut  streets;  Miss  Hannah  Fox,  339  South  Broad  street;  Mrs.  William  F. 
Jenks,  920  Clinton  street;  Mrs.  Thomas  S.  Kirkbride,  Secretary,  1406  Spruce 
street;  Hector  McIntosh,  605  North  Sixteenth  street;  Miss  Helen  L.  Parrish, 
1135  Spruce  street;  Mrs.  William  M.  Lybrand,  139  East  Walnut  Lane,  Ger¬ 
mantown;  George  Woodward,  M.  D.,  Chestnut  Hill;  C.  H.  Ludington,  Jr., 
Treasurer,  425  Arch  street. 

^  “  Lessons  from  Work.”  (B.  F.  Westcott.) 


The  Housing  Conditions  in  Boston 


By  Robert  Treat  Paine,  Esq.,  Boston 


(I2I) 


THE  HOUSING  CONDITIONS  IN  BOSTON 


By  Robert  Treat  Paine,  Esq. 

Boston 

The  housing  conditions  of  Boston  may  be  studied  under  five 
aspects : 

1.  The  growth  of  population  compared  with  the  increase  of 
houses. 

2.  The  facilities  for  the  building  of  new  houses  by  private 
enterprise. 

3.  The  influence  of  philanthropic  efforts  in  building  model 
blocks  and  separate  homes. 

4.  Building  laws. 

5.  The  diminution  of  slum  conditions. 

I.  The  following  table  has  been  prepared  by  Dr.  E.  M.  Hart¬ 
well,  statistician  of  Boston. 

Population  and  Number  of  Dwelling-Houses  with  Per  Cent  of 

Annual  Increase. 


Year 

Estimated 

Population. 

Per  Cent 
Increase. 

Total  Number 
of  Dwelling- 
Houses. 

Per  Cent 
Increase. 

Of  those 
Vacant 
Dwellings. 

189  I 

457,772 

2.07 

53,429 

2.42 

I  104 

1892 

467,260 

2.07 

54,853 

2.67 

1,269 

1893 

476,945 

2.07 

56,730 

342 

1,446 

1894 

486,830 

2  .07 

58,310 

2.79 

1,866 

1895 

496,920 

2.07 

60,039 

2.96 

1,964 

1896 

509,102 

2-45 

60,278 

.40 

2,205 

1897 

521,583 

2-45 

61,573 

215 

2,127 

1898 

534,370 

2-45 

62,850 

2.07 

2,647 

1899 

547,470 

2-45 

63,890 

1.65 

2,902 

1900 

560,892 

2-45 

64,886 

1.56 

2,686 

1901 

573.579 

2.26 

65,600 

1. 10 

2,627 

In  the  ten  years  from  1891  to  1901,  while  the  population 
increased  from  457,772  to  573,579,  or  25.3  per  cent,  the  number  of 
dwelling-houses  increased  from  53,429  to  65,600,  or  22.8  per  cent, 
not  quite  keeping  pace;  and  though  not  a  few  of  the  new  buildings 

(123) 


124 


The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy 


are  capacious  tenement  houses,  yet  actual  conditions  have  prob¬ 
ably  not  improved.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  4  per  cent  of  the 
dwellings  are  vacant. 

2.  The  facilities  for  the  building  of  new  houses  in  the  suburbs 
steadily  increase.  The  suburbs  of  Boston  are  deservedly  healthy 
and  are  ample  for  a  vast  population. 

The  President  of  the  Boston  Elevated  Railway  Company  has 
furnished  the  following  statistics,  which  show  in  the  last  five  and 
ten  year  periods  a  marvelous  development  and  explain  the  exodus 
outward  from  the  crowded  centre  into  happy  and  healthy  subur¬ 
ban  life  on  some  of  the  hundred  hills  which  make  these  suburbs  so 
attractive.  This  outward  migration  shows  no  sign  of  culmination, 
but  is  still  under  full  headway. 

The  running  time  of  the  cars  has  improved  so  that  it  now 
averages  nine  miles  per  hour  on  the  whole  system,  against  six  miles 
or  less  ten  years  ago  when  horses  were  used,  and  within  the  last  five 
years  it  has  been  reduced  about  8  per  cent.  The  track  mileage 
increased  from  260  miles  in  1891  to  296  in  1896  and  408  in  1901. 
“For  the  year  ending  September  30,  1891,  we  ran  2,326,274  trips, 
17,462,572  miles,  carried  119,264,401  revenue  passengers  and 
8,466,311  free  transfer  passengers.  The  average  length  of  each 
trip  at  that  time  was  7.5  miles.  Five  years  later  we  ran  2,822,142 
trips,  25,841,907  miles,  carried  166,862,288  revenue  passengers  and 
17,566,361  free  transfer  passengers.  The  average  length  of  each 
trip  was  9.16  miles.  Five  years  later,  or  for  the  last  fiscal  year,- 
we  ran  3,883,737  trips,  43,631,384  miles,  carried  213,703,983  revenue 
passengers  and  65,000,000  free  transfer  passengers.  The  length 
of  each  trip  had  increased  to  11.23  miles.” 

The  co-operative  bank  system  has  greatly  promoted  the  con¬ 
struction  and  separate  ownership  of  the  modest  and  cosy  little 
homes  springing  up  so  rapidly  in  all  the  suburbs  of  Boston.  The 
Pioneer  Bank  was  started  in  1877,  to-day  there  are  in  Boston 
eighteen  of  these  co-operative  banks  with  a  capital  of  $5,029,478, 
nearly  the  whole  of  it  loaned  out  on  small  estates.  A  score  of 
years  ago  it  was  no  easy  matter  to  obtain  a  “building  loan,”  but 
co-operative  banks  have  perfected  the  system  of  loans  to  builders 
upon  houses  “in  process  of  construction.”  The  admirable  process 
of  small  monthly  payments  not  only  educates  the  borrowers  into 
habits  of  saving,  but  in  a  few  years  reduces  the  loan,  so  that  the 
old-fashioned  savings  banks  with  their  immense  capital  can  take 


The  Housing  Coiiditions  in  Boston  125 

up  at  lower  rates  these  loans,  when  they  are  reduced  to  the  statute 
limit  of  60  per  cent  of  the  value  of  the  estate.  Hence  it  is  the 
case  that  the  $5,000,000  of  co-operative  bank  capital  by  no  means 
measures  the  full  beneficial  influence  of  this  system  in  the  growth 
of  suburban  homes. 

3.  The  influence  of  philanthropic  enterprise,  compared  with 
that  of  private  business,  has  been  insignificant. 

Three  incorporated  societies  are  working  in  a  small  way,  the 
oldest,  the  Boston  Co-operative  Building  Company,  chartered  in 
1871.  With  a  capital  of  $292,000,  it  has  about  $400,000  invested 
in  seventy-eight  houses  with  985  rooms,  occupied  by  311  families 
containing  1,023  persons. 

The  Harrison  avenue  group  of  twenty-four  three-storied  brick 
houses — each,  except  the  corners,  arranged  for  three  families — ^lias 
attracted  deserved  attention,  with  its  hollow  square  in  the  centre, 
tastefully  arranged  as  a  playground  for  the  children,  and  a  bit  of 
beauty  for  the  parents. 

The  company  has  just  started  to  reproduce  this  hollow  square 
on  its  last  purchase  of  33,000  feet  on  Massachusetts  avenue.  Mr. 
A.  W.  Longfellow,  the  architect  of  the  Harrison  avenue  group, 
furnishes  this  plan  of  a  corner  and  a  normal  interior  house  just 
completed  on  Massachusetts  avenue,  showing  the  latest  develop¬ 
ments  of  model  tenement  house  design,  and  also  a  land  plan. 

The  thirty-one  years  of  life  of  this  company  show  many  vicissi¬ 
tudes;  7  per  cent  being  earned  for  some  years,  and  then  from 
E876  to  1889,  dividends  were  stopped  or  reduced  to  3  per  cent 
and  earnings  were  invested.  Recently  dividends  have  been  6 
per  cent  or  5  per  cent.  But  the  capitalization  of  undivided  profits 
has  been  so  large,  that  it  is  not  possible  to  ascertain  what  the  just 
annual  earnings  are  from  year  to  year,  and  hence  the  educational 
influence  is  lost  upon  other  capitalists  who  might  be  incited,  by  a 
clear  and  exact  statement  of  facts,  to  follow  the  most  commendable 
lead  of  this  company  in  building  the  very  best  model  tenements 
and  having  them  managed  by  the  considerate  care  of  women  agents. 

The  Workingmen’s  Building  Association  was  organized  in 
1888,  to  build  small  separate  houses  for  sale.  Its  first  purchase  of 
668,591  feet,  about  three  miles  out  in  Roxbury,  was  most  successful. 
This  tract  was  divided  into  150  lots,  averaging  4,457  feet,  so  that 
one  acre  has  ten  lots,  with  an  estimated  population  of  sixty  to 
seventy  souls. 


126 


The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy 


SECOND  FLOOR  LWING  ROOM  SECOND  FLOOR  LIVIWG  ROOM 

n^*-15^'HALL  &CO  ROOM  <? A 10^  12^0.15  ~SEO  ROOM 

FlftST  FLOOR  PLAM  OF  TWO  H0USE5  OF  THE. 
MASSACHUSETTS  AVENUE.  BLOCK  FOR  TH£ 
Boston  cooperative  building  company  t 

•  A  W-LONGFELLOW  •  ARCHITECT* 


The  Housing  Conditions  in  Boston 


127 


PLAN  SHOWING  ARRANCEMENT  OR  6LOCKS  ON  MASS.  AVE.  L OT  0.^O‘x2O<D 
AS  PROPOSED  POR  THE  BOSTON  COOPERATIVE  BUILOINC;  COMPANY  '4f  '4f  *4' 

A  W  UONCPELIOW  ARCHITECT-  BOSTON* 


128 


The  Annals  of  the  Americari  Academy 


The  houses  cost  from  $i,8oo  to  $3,000,  and  were  almost  all 
for  single  families,  total  cost  of  a  house  and  land  varying  from 
$2,600  to  $4,500.  They  were  all  sold  by  1894.  Its  next  venture 
in  Dorchester  found  the  demand  for  single  houses  painfully  reduced 
in  the  depression  of  the  last  seven  years,  while  a  marked  preference 
shows  itself  for  “two-family”  or  “three-flat”  houses. 

This  company  has  not  succeeded  in  building  houses  at  lower 
cost,  to  its  great  regret. 

4.  The  building  laws  of  a  city  greatly  influence  results.  Bos¬ 
ton  was  startled  by  its  great  fire  of  1872  into  creating  a  stringent 
code.  This  was  remodeled  in  1885,  chapter  374.  After  a  com¬ 
mission  had  studied  the  subject  anew,  the  present  code  was  enacted 
in  1892,  chapter  419,  with  subsequent  amendments. 

Two  features  are  especially  important:  (i),  the  percentage 
of  the  area  of  a  lot  which  may  be  built  upon;  (2),  the  height  of  the 
buildings  and  the  provisions  as  to  fire-proof  construction. 

The  law  of  1892  permitted  three-quarters  of  the  area  to  be 
covered,  measuring  to  the  middle  of  the  streets  on  which  the  lot 
abuts.  This  proviso,  however,  would  allow  a  building  to  cover 
the  whole  of  a  lot  sixty  feet  deep  on  a  forty-foot  street.  The  act 
also  required  two  exposures  on  open  spaces  at  least  ten  feet  wide, 
of  an  aggregate  length  of  one  foot,  for  every  twenty- five  square 
feet  occupied  by  the  building. 

These  last  provisions,  however,  were  found  not  to  prohibit  the 
construction  of  a  huge  four-storied  tenement  house  on  a  lot  forty- 
two  feet  wide  and  loi  feet  deep,  built  on  a  dumb-bell  plan,  with 
only  about  two  feet  of  open  land  across  a  part,  but  not  the  whole, 
of  the  rear.  It  was  the  erection,  in  1894,  of  this  barrack,  which  led 
many  observers  to  doubt  whether  these  new  conditions  were  not 
worse  than  the  old;  whether  these  vast  tenement  houses,  sometimes 
called  model  houses,  were  not  far  worse  in  many  essentials  for  the 
health  and  welfare  of  their  occupants  than  the  little  old  houses, 
often  built  of  wood,  which  they  replaced.  These  views  are  con¬ 
firmed  by  the  deliberate  judgment  which  Miss  Octavia  Hill  has 
put  on  record  in  her  valuable  chapter  in  the  second  volume  of 
Charles  Booth’s  great  work  on  London. 

The  construction  of  this  great  tenement  house,  with  such 
trifling  rear  light,  occasioned  the  act  of  1895,  chapter  239,  which 
reduced  the  area  to  be  occupied  from  75  to  65  per  cent,  and  also 
required  an  open  space  across  the  whole  rear  of  the  building,  and 


The  Housing  Conditio7ts  in  Boston 


129 


of  a  depth  equal  to  one-half  the  width  of  the  front  street,  not 
exceeding  twenty  feet,  or  an  equivalent  area  of  open  space  in  the 
rear  of  other  dimensions. 

The  act  of  1897,  chapter  413,  section  9,  exempts  comer  lots 
from  this  requirement  of  open  rear  land,  and  also  gives  the  Building 
Commissioner  discretion  to  accept  “an  equivalent  area  of  open 
space  in  the  rear  or  on  either  side  of  such  building.” 

It  is  woithy  of  note  that  these  requirements  are  less  stringent 
than  those  in  the  new  tenement  house  law,  chapter  334,  of  1901,  for 
Greater  New  York,  which  limits  the  building  to  90  per  cent  of  a 
corner  lot  and  70  per  cent  of  any  other  lot. 

Secondly,  the  law  of  1897,  chapter  413,  section  3,  required 
every  tenement  house  to  be  a  first-class  building,  i.  “  of  fire¬ 
proof  construction  throughout.”  It  was  at  once  apprehended 
that  this  requirement,  that  all  tenement  houses  must  be  of  fire¬ 
proof  construction,  would  stop  the  building  of  tenement  houses  for 
tenants  paying  moderate  rents.  Subsequent  investigation  showed, 
that  after  existing  permits  had  been  exhausted,  few,  if  any,  tene¬ 
ment  houses  were  built  with  tenements  renting  at  $16  a  month  or 
less.  Reaction  set  in,  and  by  the  act  of  1900,  chapter  321,  the 
requirement  of  fire-proof  construction  was  removed  from  tenement 
houses  of  not  more  than  four  stories  and  not  more  than  fifty  feet 
in  height,  but  here  again  came  a  proviso  limiting  these  houses  to 
“two  families,  or  less,  above  the  second  story.” 

This  is  the  present  tenement  house  law  of  Boston.  It  seri¬ 
ously  handicaps  the  construction  of  tenement  houses,  but  whether 
this  is  too  stringent,  and  the  influences  are  harmful,  is  not  yet 
apparent.  So  far  as  an  impulse  is  given  to  scatter  the  population 
out  into  the  healthier  suburbs  and  into  the  small,  separate, 
detached  suburban  homes,  each  with  its  little  plot  of  land,  instead 
of  the  fearful  overcrowding  of  families  in  the  huge  new  tenement 
houses,  students  of  the  social  welfare  of  the  people  must  certainly 
rejoice. 

In  the  old  North  End  of  Boston,  where  population  is  densest 
and  rentals  are  highest,  the  erection  of  new  tenement  houses  and 
the  remodeling  of  old  buildings  into  tenement  houses  are  visible 
in  many  of  the  streets.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  southerly  part 
of  old  Boston,  such  enterprise  is  nearly  at  a  standstill  and  rents  are 
falling,  owing  probably  to  the  greater  attractiveness  of  the  neigh¬ 
boring  suburbs. 


130  The  Annals  of  the  A7nerican  Academy 

The  definition  of  a  tenement  house  by  the  number  of  tene¬ 
ments,  rather  than  by  the  number  of  rooms,  discriminates  with 
unintended  harshness  on  just  that  class  whose  welfare  ought 
especially  to  be  studied,  the  very  poor,  the  lone  widow,  the  widower, 
the  parent  with  a  single  child,  who  always  find  with  difficulty  a 
single  spacious  room,  and  usually  pay  higher  rents  because  of  the 
short  supply  of  such  much-needed  accommodation.  Twenty 
years  ago  a  committee  of  the  Associated  Charities  made  a  report 
to  show  the  importance  of  building  tenements  of  a  single  room 
and  to  call  the  attention  of  capitalists  to  this  need.  A  small  one¬ 
storied  house  with  only  four  rooms,  adapted  for  the  needs  of  four 
separate  women,  must  conform  to  all  the  expensive  provisions  of 
the  tenement  house  code. 

A  just  and  judicious  amendment  should  define  a  tenement 
house  as  having  more  than  three  tenements  "'and  con'aining  more 
than  twelve  rooms T 

Workers  among  the  poor  were  surprised  last  year  at  orders 
issuing  from  the  Board  of  Health,  for  single  tenants  to  vacate  single 
rooms.  Such  a  notice  was  nailed  on  the  door  of  the  large  “square 
room”  in  the  model  block  of  the  Boston  Co-operative  Building 
Company,  on  Canton  street,  occupied  by  a  lone  old  woman.  It  is 
supposed  that  this  mistaken  policy  has  been  abandoned. 

A  strange  thing  happened  in  1892;  the  building  law  of  that 
year,  chapter  419,  in  its  final  section  138,  repealing  numerous  laws, 
included  a  repeal  of  the  health  provision,  1885,  chapter  382,  section 
4,  defining  for  health  purposes  a  “tenement  house.”  So  that  since 
1892,  the  Board  of  Health  has  been  shorn  of  so  much  of  its  powers 
over  tenement  houses  as  depended  on  the  definition,  so  carefully 
inserted  in  the  health  law  of  1885,  which  has  been  since  then  the 
health  code  of  Boston.  Perhaps  it  is  stranger  still  that  no  allusion 
can  be  found  in  the  annual  reports  of  the  Board  of  Health,  to  this 
mysterious  and  probably  unintended  curtailment  of  health  powers, 
the  exact  legal  effect  whereof  no  man  can  tell.^ 

1  The  Board  of  Health,  in  their  report  for  1900,  (p.  40)  say:  “A  tenement  house  in  Massa¬ 
chusetts  is  one  occupied  by  four  or  more  families,  while  in  New  York  it  is  one  occupied  by 
three  families  which  was  the  law  in  Massachusetts  until  the  statute  was  amended  in  1894.” 
This  sentence  is  rich  in  blunders.  No  amendment  was  made  in  1894.  The  Health  Act  of  1885, 
chapter  382,  section  4,  defined  a  tenement  house  as  one  with  “more  than  three  families."  The 
Act  of  1889,  chapter  450,  section  4,  changed  this  to  "more  than  two  families."  But  the 
whole  thing  was  repealed  by  1892,  chapter  419,  section  138,  so  that  since  1892  there  has  been  no 
definition  at  all  of  a  tenement  house  tn  the  health  code  of  Boston 


The  Housing  Conditions  in  Boston  131 

5.  A  crusade  for  the  extirpation  of  the  slums  of  Boston  has 
been  waged  for  the  last  fifteen  years,  thus  far  with  no  great  success. 
Housing  conditions  are  justly  to  be  condemned  so  long  as  old, 
dilapidated  and  unsanitary  buildings  are  allowed  to  stand,  often 
so  overciowded  upon  the  land  that  sunlight  and  air  are  practically 
shut  out.  Such  conditions  are  a  disgrace  to  any  city.  They  tempt 
the  most  wretched  of  the  poor,  or  vicious,  or  criminal  classes  to 
worse  degradation.  The  bread-winner  loses  his  health,  which  is 
his  only  wealth.  Children  grow  up  in  shameless  loss  of  self-respect. 
Frequent  visitors  are  physicians,  police  officers,  and  charity  agents; 
physicians  to  struggle  with  needless  disease,  the  police  to  arrest 
criminals  created  by  their  foul  environment,  and  charity  agents  to 
relieve  countless  varieties  of  want  caused  by  cruel  and  unjust 
conditions  of  life. 

Private  initiative  has  been  struggling  in  these  years  to  secure 
more  vigorous  action  by  the  Board  of  Health  in  the  destruction  of 
the  worst  slums.  Prof.  Dwight  Porter,  acting  under  the  auspices 
of  a  voluntary  committee,  made  an  investigation  and  “Report  upon 
a  Sanitary  Inspection  of  Certain  Tenement-house  Districts  in  Bos¬ 
ton,”  in  1888,  which  really  started  the  movement. 

Committees  of  the  Associated  Charities  have  lodged  indict¬ 
ments  against  many  vile  slums  and  have  been  heard  by  the  board. 
In  1891-2,  the  state  caused  the  Bureau  of  Labor  to  make  a  thorough 
and  exhaustive  investigation.  The  report  of  Hon.  H.  G.  Wadlin 
sets  forth  in  two  volumes  the  results.  (2 2d  and  23d  Annual 
Reports  of  the  Bureau  of  the  Statistics  of  Labor.  “A  Tenement 
House  Census  of  Boston,”  made  pursuant  to  chapter  115,  Resolves 
of  1891.) 

Sanitary  conditions  were  classified  under  five  heads :  excellent, 
good,  fair,  poor,  and  bad.  It  may  be  truly  stated  that  tenements 
falling  so  low  as  to  be  classed  “bad  ”  are  so  intolerable  as  to  dem.and 
most  summary  measures  for  their  destruction,  yet  1,346  houses 
were  found  to  deserve  this  just  but  terrible  condemnation  (Vol.  i, 

P-  577)- 

“It  may  be  safely  assumed  that  whenever  a  tenement  was 
designated  as  entirely  bad  as  to  its  inside  condition — that  is,  to  be 
more  explicit,  was  bad  as  to  facilities  for  light  and  air,  ventilation 
and  cleanliness — such  a  tenement  was  unfit  for  h\iman  habitation. 
The  existence  of  such  tenements  forms  primarily  an  indictment 
against  the  landlord  who  is  responsible  for  their  condition.  They 


I 


132  The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy 

should  either  be  abandoned  or  improved.  In  some  cases  such 
improvement  as  would  render  them  suitable  for  occupancy  can 
easily  be  made;  in  other  cases,  no  doubt,  they  should  be  perma¬ 
nently  abandoned.”  (Vol.  2,  p.  417.) 

“The  existence  of  defective  outside  sanitary  conditions  is, 
upon  the  whole,  an  indictment  against  the  city;  for  while  some  of  the 
defects  are  due  to  unclean  or  poorly  kept  private  ways  and  alleys, 
the  responsibility  of  the  city  for  the  existence  of  such  defects  can 
hardly  be  avoided.”  (Italics  are  the  writer’s.)  (Vol.  2,  p.  418.) 

In  the  reports  of  the  Boston  Board  of  Health  no  allusion  is 
found  to  this  fearful  indictment  by  the  authorities  of  the  Common¬ 
wealth,  or  to  the  following  municipal  report. 

In  1895  a  special  committee  of  the  Common  Council  was 
appointed  to  consider  what  improvement  could  be  made  in  the 
tenement  districts  of  Boston,  and  what  legislation  was  needed. 
They  made  a  very  brief  ”  Partial  Report”  (Document  125  of  1895) 
from  which  may  be  quoted: — “In  the  North  End  the  tenement 
houses  are  to-day  a  serious  menace  to  public  health.  .  .  .  The 

most  astounding  circumstance  in  connection  with  this  investigation 
that  attracted  the  attention  of  your  committee  is  the  social  and  finan¬ 
cial  standing  of  the  owners  of  the  most  of  these  tenement  houses.” 

In  1897  a  study  was  made,  under  the  direction  of  the  Tene¬ 
ment  House  Committee  of  the  Twentieth  Century  Club,  of  certain 
typical  slums,  and  the  results  were  published  with  plans  of  some 
seven  areas  where  buildings  were  old,  dilapidated  and  so  over¬ 
crowded  on  the  land,  that  no  remedy  was  possible  except  destruc¬ 
tion  either  of  all  or  of  many  of  the  tenements.  (“Some  Slums  in 
Boston,”  by  H.  K.  Estabrook,  May  15,  1898.) 

A  public  hearing  was  granted  by  the  Board  of  Health  on 
June  27,  1898,  and  many  competent  experts  and  real  estate  owners 
testified  to  the  intolerable  conditions.  Mayor  Quincy  attended  the 
hearing  and  promised  strong  support.  Commendable  progress  was 
made  in  vacating  or  destroying  some  of  the  worst  slums  for  about 
three  years.  But  the  exercise  of  the  power  to  “destroy”  seems 
recently  to  have  been  paralyzed,  perhaps,  as  a  result  of  pending 
litigation. 

The  law  grants  two  powers  to  the  Board  of  Health  to  deal  with 
these  evils.  Since  1850,  chapter  108,  tenements  may  be  “vacated” 
if  adjudged  unfit  for  human  habitation.  This  power  should  be 
exercised  only  after  thorough  investigation  and  on  deliberate 


The  Housing  Conditions  in  Boston 


133 


judgment,  setting  forth  true  and  sufficient  causes.  It  may  easily 
work  grave  injury  to  owners  if  exercised  unjustly.  Yet,  when 
justly  exercised^  orders  to  vacate  should  be  adhered  to  and  not 
lightly  rescinded  because  of  political  or  other  pressure.  Observe 
that  this  power  to  vacate  requires  no  destruction  of  the  building 
and  cannot  justly  prevent  use  of  the  vacated  tenement  for  other 
fit  purposes,  not  of  human  habitation. 

In  1897,  chapter  219,  the  power  to  destroy  [the  statute  word 
is  “remove”]  buildings  first  appeared  in  Massachusetts.  Its 
origin  is  interesting.  The  British  “  Housing  of  the  Working  Classes 
Act,”  1890  (53-54  Viet.,  chapter  70),  sections  30-37,  is  the  origin, 
so  far  as  I  know,  of  this  new  power  “to  order  the  demolition” 
of  a  “dwelling-house”  “unfit  for  human  habitation.”  Section  38 
enlarged  this  power  and  made  it  apply  to  “obstructive  buildings,” 
thus  condemning  one  building  because  it  injures  another  building. 
It  is  surprising  that  any  American  lawyer  could  suppose  that  such 
a  power  would  be  sustained  in  America,  where  the  unlimited  .powers 
of  the  British  Parliament  are  much  curtailed  by  constitutional 
safeguards. 

Yet  New  York  soon  copied  this  British  Act  (1895,  chapter  567, 
amended  by  1897,  chapter  57)  in  shape  so  condensed  as  to  make  its 
injustice  more  conspicuous.  This  act  was  enforced  for  a  few  years 
in  the  city  of  New  York,  till  owners  of  property  began  to  defend 
their  rights  in  court.  The  suit  of  Dassori  vs.  the  Health  Depart¬ 
ment  of  New  York  has  settled  that  this  law  cannot  be  enforced  to 
its  full  extent. 

“  Proof  that  rear  tenement  houses,  each  five  stories  high,  lighted 
only  from  a  court  on  the  west  or  front  from  five  to  eleven  feet  wide, 
and  a  space  or  opening  of  eleven  inches  wide  at  the  southeast  corner 
of  the  court,  and  a  space  on  the  east  side  of  eight  inches  filled  with 
all  sorts  of  filth,  occupied  by  115  persons,  showing  a  death-rate 
almost  twice  the  normal  one,  damp,  filthy,  infested  with  vermin, 
and  filled  with  foul  smells,  and  by  their  construction  interfering 
with  the  light  which  would  otherwise  have  been  enjoyed  by  tene¬ 
ment  houses  on  the  front  of  the  lots,  justifies  a  finding  that  the  rear 
tenement  houses  are  unfit  for  habitation,  but  does  not  necessarily 
establish  the  fact  that  they  are  not  capable  of  being  made  fit  for 
other  uses  to  which  the  owner  might  lawfully  put  them,  nor  does  it 
show  that  the  nuisance  could  not  be  abated  in  any  other  way  than 
by  their  destruction. 


134 


The  An7ials  of  the  American  Academy 


“  The  owner  of  a  tenement  house  cannot  be  compelled  to  submit 
to  its  destruction,  if  it  is  on  his  own  land,  merely  because  some 
building  adjacent  to  it  is,  by  reason  of  its  existence,  deprived  of 
proper  ventilation.”  (N.  Y.  Health  Dept.  vs.  Dassori,  Appellate 
Division  Reports,  Vol.  21,  p.  348.  October,  1897.) 

Boston  deserves  no  credit  for  the  slovenly  shape  in  which  this 
faulty  law  was  reproduced,  1897,  chapter  219,  closely  following  the 
language  of  the  New  York  act.  First  the  power  to  vacate  is  set 
forth,  yet  while  covering  the  same  ground  as  our  ancient  and  well- 
tried  statute  (1850,  chap.  108;  Pub.  Sts.,  chap.  80,  sec.  24;  Revised 
Laws,  chap.  75,  sec.  71),  neither  repeals  nor  amends  it.  Then 
follows  the  power  to  order  “removed,”  i.  e.,  destroyed,  a  building 
irremediably  “unfit  for  human  habitation.” 

Statute  1899,  chapter  222,  enlarged  these  powers  of  the  Board 
of  Health  so  that  the  order  may  be  not  merely  to  “vacate”  a  build¬ 
ing  “unfit  for  human  habitation,”  but  to  “  cease  to  use”  a  building 
“unfit  for  use”;  the  power  to  order  buildings  destroyed  remaining 
limited  to  those  “unfit  for  human  habitation.” 

The  suit  (October,  1900)  of  Holland  vs.  Durgin  et  al.  (Board 
of  Health)  has  gone  on  appeal  to  the  Supreme  Court.  It  raises 
interesting  questions  as  to  this  last  statute,  its  constitutionality, 
the  lawfulness  of  a  decree  to  remove,  without  previous  notice  to  or 
opportunity  to  be  heard  by  the  owner,  as  well  as  the  lawfulness  of 
an  order  to  remove  stables  occupied  by  horses  and  sheds  only  for 
storage  as  “unfit  for  habitation”  {sic),  the  statute  language  being 
“unfit  for  human  habitation.” 

The  Board  of  Health  is  thus  clothed  with  transcendent  powers, 
whose  exercise  vitally  affects  the  physical  and  moral  welfare, 
especially  of  that  large  portion  of  the  people  who  are  lowest  in  the 
economic  scale.  These  powers  should  only  be  lodged  in  the  hands 
of  men  of  strong  character,  sound  judgment,  sanitary  experience 
and  genuine  love  for  the  plain  people.  Yet  the  action  of  the  Boston 
Board  of  Health  has  been  characterized  for  many  years  past  by 
mysterious  apathy. 

The  law  provides  that  the  Board  of  Health  shall  make  annually 
“a  full  and  comprehensive  statement  of  its  acts  during  the  year, 
and  a  review  of  the  sanitary"  condition  of  the  city,”  yet  in  the 
annual  volumes  of  the  last  ten  years  the  space  devoted  to  the 
sanitary  condition  of  the  city  has  been  utterly  insignificant. 

“To  this  subject,,  houses  vacated,  nearly  a  whole  page  is 


The  Housing  Conditions  in  Boston 


135 


devoted  in  the  report  for  1892;  nearly  two  pages  in  the  report 
for  1893 ;  from  four  to  six  lines  in  each  of  the  reports  for  1894,  ’95, 
and  ’96;  and  not  one  word  in  the  report  for  1897.  Throughout 
the  122  pages  of  this  last  report,  this  extremely  important  duty 
to  vacate  houses  unfit  for  occupancy  is  not  mentioned. 

“The  report  for  1895  says  only  this:  ‘The  number  of  houses 
which  the  board  has  ordered  vacated  during  the  year  because  of 
their  unsanitary  condition  is  112;  of  this  number,  however,  a  very 
large  per  cent  were  put  in  a  satisfactory  condition  before  the 
expiration  of  the  time  allowed  the  occupants  to  quit  the  premises, 
and  in  such  cases  the  orders  were  not  enforced.’  The  report  for 
1896  simply  quotes  this  one  sentence,  word  for  word — except  that 
‘12 1  ’  is  substituted  for  ‘112.’  This  one  sentence,  then,  is  the  ‘full 
and  comprehensive  statement’  of  the  acts  of  the  three  years, 

1895-7-” 

In  none  of  these  reports  since  1892  “is  a  list  given  either  of 
houses  ordered  vacated  or  of  houses  actually  vacated,  yet  hun¬ 
dreds  of  other  lists  and  tables  are  given,  as  lists  of  stables  ordered 
discontinued,  of  passageways  paved,  and  even  of  minor  defects 
in  certain  houses.  While  in  the  reports  of  the  New  York  Board 
of  Health  there  are  complete  lists  of  houses  vacated  and  of  those 
demolished,  in  only  two  of  our  reports,  those  for  1892  and  ’93,  are 
any  of  the  houses  ordered  vacated  named.” 

The  objection  of  injury  to  tenants  by  the  destruction  of 
slums  has  no  weight.  The  Associated  Charities  (Report  of  1898, 
pp.  40-48)  seized  the  occasion  of  the  building  of  the  South  Station 
and  the  change  in  the  neighborhood,  in  1897-8,  to  cause  a  careful 
study  to  be  made  of  the  results  upon  the  welfare  of  the  twelve 
poorest  families  known  to  them  when  that  sudden  and  forced 
migration  occurred.  “It  brought  out  the  interesting  fact  that  in 
every  case  the  condition  of  the  family  was  improved  by  the  change.” 

Death-rates  by  wards  are  shown  in  the  annual  report  of  1901 
of  the  Registry  Department  of  Boston  for  the  first  time,  so  that 
it  is  possible  to  compare.  The  ghastly  fact  stands  out  that  the 
death-rate  in  some  wards  is  more  than  double  what  it  is  in  the 
healthier  wards,  viz:  one  person  dying  in  the  year  1900  out  of  39 
in  Ward  7,  40  in  Ward  13,  41  in  Ward  6,  and  42  in  Ward  5,  con¬ 
trasted  with  one  in  81  in  Ward  25,  72  in  Ward  24,  71  in  Ward  23, 
69  in  Ward  20  (p.  5). 

Now  that  this  table  proves  how  the  murder  of  the  innocents 


136 


The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy 


goes  on,  the  public  conscience  should  be  aroused.  Statisticians 
will  also  tell  us  that  the  ratio  of  sickness  keeps  pace  with  the  ratio 
of  death,  so  that  sickness  among  the  poor,  with  its  train  of  evils, 
is  twofold  more  than  good  sanitary  conditions  should  tolerate. 

The  model  buildings  of  London  have  told  the  world  what  a 
powerful  influence  upon  the  length  of  life  (and  of  course  upon  the 
amount  of  sickness)  of  their  occupants  is  exerted  by  healthy  homes. 
The  Peabody  buildings  with  a  population  of  about  20,000  show  a 
death-rate  of  about  i  in  71;  and  the  Waterlow  buildings,  with 
30,000  tenants,  about  i  in  100,  while  the  rate  of  all  London  is  about 
I  in  57.  In  Boston,  i  out  of  48  dies  yearly. 

A  Tenement  House  Commission  will  probably  be  appointed 
by  the  Mayor  this  year,  to  consider  and  report  upon  existing  con¬ 
ditions  and  possible  improvement. 

On  the  whole,  the  outlook  is  full  of  hope.  Vigilance  and 
vigorous  action  are  demanded  of  all  mrmicipal  authorities.  Public 
interest  is  aroused.  The  action  of  other  cities  in  Great  Britain  as 
well  as  in  New  York  and  other  American  cities  warns  Boston  not 
to  fall  behind  in  this  movement,  which  will  surely  give  to  us  and  our 
children  a  healthier  city  for  the  homes  of  the  plain  people,  with  its 
plague  spots  extirpated,  and  an  increasing  proportion  of  the  popu¬ 
lation  living  out  in  suburban  homes  in  this  city  of  unsurpassed 
suburban  beauty. 


Housing  Conditions  in  Jersey  City 


By  Mary  Buell  Sayles,  Fellow  of  the  College  Settlements 

Association 


HOUSING  CONDITIONS  IN  JERSEY  CITY 


By  Mary  Buell  Sayles 
Fellow  of  the  College  Settlements  Association 

The  housing  of  the  working  people  in  Jersey  City  presents  few 
striking  or  distinctive  features.  There  are  in  the  crowded  parts 
of  the  city  no  such  alley-intersected  or  narrow  back  street  districts 
as  are  found  in  certain  sections  of  Chicago  and  Philadelphia;  there 
is  no  block  which  presents  such  conspicuously  bad  conditions  of 
overcrowded  land  areas,  and  consequently  deficient  lighting  and 
ventilation,  as  prevail  throughout  the  newer  tenement  house  dis¬ 
tricts  of  New  York.  None  the  less  the  evils  of  construction  of 
sanitary  neglect  and  of  overcrowded  living  quarters,  which  have 
been  brought  to  light  in  the  recently  completed  investigation  upon 
which  the  present  article  is  based,  are  of  a  character  both  to  claim 
the  interest  of  specialists  and  to  compel  the  attention  of  citizens. 

In  his  report  on  housing  conditions  and  tenement  laws  in 
leading  American  cities,  Mr.  Veiller,  then  secretary  of  the  New 
York  Tenement  House  Commission  of  1900,  notes  but  four  cities, 
out  of  the  twenty-seven  which  he  discusses,  as  having  a  tenement 
house  problem.  Among  these  is  Jersey  City.  Yet  compared  with 
the  situation  in  New  York,  the  Jersey  City  tenement  house  problem 
is  still  in  its  early  stages.  The  great  mass  of  the  working  class 
population  is  housed  either  in  converted  dwellings  or  in  tenement 
houses  of  the  primitive  type  commonly  erected  here,  as  in  Man¬ 
hattan,  twenty  to  forty  years  ago;  and  these  two  classes  of  houses, 
which  in  the  great  city  have  been  rapidly  giving  way,  during  the  last 
generation,  before  the  onslaught  of  the  dumb-bell  tenement  with  its 
characteristic  eighteen-inch  wide  air-shaft  and  overcrowded  lot, 
in  the  smaller  city  show  few  signs  of  a  similar  yielding  of  place. 
Very  few  tenements  are  at  present  in  process  of  erection,  and  so 
few  built  within  the  last  five  or  even  ten  years  were  found  in  the 
districts  investigated,  that  it  is  difficult  to  speak  with  certainty  of 
present  tendencies  in  construction.  It  is,  therefore,  chiefly  to  evils 
long  fixed  upon  the  community  and  grown  so  familiar  as  to  be 
generally  overlooked,  that  attention  has  been  directed — evils  none 
the  less  serious  for  this  fact,  and  all  the  more  difficult  to  eradicate. 

(139) 


140  The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy 

The  investigation  upon  which,  as  has  been  said,  the  present 
paper  is  based,  was  necessarily  very  limited  in  scope,  as  it  was 
undertaken  single-handed  and,  under  the  conditions  of  the  College 
Settlements  Association  fellowship,  confined  to  a  single  academic 
year.  Five  hundred  houses  having  been  decided  upon  as  a  reason¬ 
able  estimate  of  the  field  which  could  and  should  be  covered,  three 
districts  were  selected  as  representative  both  of  the  worst  and — 
hardly  less  important — of  average  housing  conditions.  Seventeen 
blocks  in  all  were  investigated.  Of  these  the  investigation  of  the 
first  was  largely  experimental,  as  it  was  undertaken  before  the 
printing  of  the  regular  schedules  used  later  on,  and  its  results, 
though  hardly  less  complete  than  those  afterwards  obtained,  are 
not  in  all  respects  uniform  with  them,  and  have  therefore,  for  the 
present,  been  set  aside.  It  is  then  with  the  returns  from  sixteen 
blocks,  consisting  of  the  records  of  five  hundred  and  four  houses,^ 
and  of  two  thousand  one  hundred  and  fifty-four  apartments,^  that 
we  shall  deal  in  this  paper.® 

Of  the  three  districts,  the  first  and  largest  includes  the  eight 
blocks  bounded  by  Sussex  and  Essex  and  by  Van  Vorst  and  Hud¬ 
son  streets,  together  with  two  others  adjoining,  extending  between 
Hudson  and  Greene  to  Grand,  and  between  Van  Vorst  and  Warren 
to  Dudley  street.  The  widest  range  of  conditions,  as  might  be 
expected  from  its  relative  size,  is  to  be  found  in  this  distriet.  From 
the  comfortable  well-built  dwellings  of  Sussex  street,  only  recently 
converted  to  tenement  house  uses,  and  still  in  a  large  proportion 
of  cases  unaltered,  to  the  four  and  five  story  brick  tenements  and 
the  huddled  rear  houses  of  Morris  and  Essex  streets,  every  type 
and  grade  of  house  is  represented.  The  population  of  the  district 
is  overwhelmingly  foreign.  Only  18  per  cent  of  the  1,278  families 
interviewed  were  of  American  stock,  while  in  some  of  the  blocks 
south  of  Morris  street  the  percentage  falls  as  low  as  ii  per  cent. 

1  Entrance  to  nine  houses  within  these  blocks  was  prevented  by  owners — seven  of  the 
houses  belonging  to  one  person.  While  the  Board  of  Health  badge  was  worn  by  the  investi¬ 
gator,  no  actual  authority  was  conferred  therewith,  so  that  entrance  to  houses  or  apartments 
could  not  be  insisted  upon. 

®  These  2,1 54  apartments  make  up  98  per  cent  of  all  occupied  apartments  in  the  houses  in¬ 
vestigated.  In  the  case  of  a  few  of  the  remaining  apartments,  information  was  refused  by 
tenants;  in  most  cases,  however,  the  apartments  were  not  investigated  because  tenants  could 
not  be  found  at  home  during  the  day,  neighbors  stating  that  they  were  absent  regularly  at 
work. 

®  A  very  few  apartments  were  occupied  by  two  families  ;  hence  the  slightly  greater  number 
of  families  than  of  apartments  covered. 


Hotising  Conditions  in  Jersey  City 


141 


The  foreign  elements  most  largely  represented  are  the  Polish  and 
Russian,  who  together  lead  with  28  per  cent ;  the  Germans  who  follow 
with  20  per  cent,  and  the  Irish  with  18  per  cent.  Twenty  other 
nationalities  are  represented,  but  as  the  most  numerous,  the 
Jewish,  is  represented  by  but  thirty-two  families,  no  one  of  them 
forms  an  important  element  numerically  in  the  population. 

The  industrial  attractions  which  have  brought  together  this 
foreign  population  are  net  far  to  seek.  The  great  American  Sugar 
Refinery  looms  conspicuously  on  the  southern  boundary  of  the 
district;  numerous  other  factories  and  workshops  are  interspersed 
through  the  blocks;  while  to  the  north,  within  a  few  minutes’  walk, 
lies  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  and  to  the  south,  across  a  narrow 
strip  of  water,  stretch  the  docks  of  the  Central  Railroad  of  New 
Jersey.  The  foreign  population  shows,  as  was  to  be  expected,  a 
heavy  preponderance  of  factory  hands,  railroad  employees,  and 
longshoremen. 

The  second  district  includes  the  two  blocks  bounded  by  Rail¬ 
road  avenue  and  Morgan  street  and  by  Henderson  and  Warren 
streets,  and  another  adjoining,  extending  between  Provost  and 
Henderson  to  Bay  street.  Bounded  to  the  south  by  the  Penn¬ 
sylvania  Railroad’s  elevated  tracks,  stretching  out  toward  the  Erie 
Railroad,  and  hedged  in  towards  the  Hudson  by  factories,  foun- 
deries  and  workshops,  it  offers  to  the  immigrant  almost  the  same  in¬ 
ducements  of  employment  as  does  District  I,  and  presents  an 
even  larger  percentage  of  foreign-born  inhabitants.  Of  the  506 
families  whose  apartments  were  investigated,  not  quite  14  per  cent 
were  Americans,  42  per  cent  were  Polish,  18  per  cent  Irish,  13 
per  cent  Italians  and  4  per  cent  Germans.  Among  the  remaining 
families  the  Jewish  lead,  numbering  16. 

The  houses  of  this  district  correspond  with  the  older  and  more 
neglected  portion  of  District  I,  showing,  however,  a  larger  pro¬ 
portion  of  wooden  buildings  and  a  smaller  proportion  of  high 
tenements. 

District  III,  consisting  of  the  three  blocks  bounded  by  First 
and  Second  and  by  Monmouth  and-  Merseles  streets,  is  located 
farther  from  the  business  centre  of  the  city  and  from  the  water 
front,  near  the  foot  of  the  hill  on  which  are  situated  most  of  the 
better-class  resident  districts.  It  lies  in  the  heart  of  what  is  known 
as  Little  Italy — the  most  distinctively  national  section  of  the  city, 
and  the  most  dilapidated  and  neglected.  Sixty-five  per  cent  of  the 


142 


The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy 


377  families  interviewed  were  Italians,  and  their  manner  of  packing 
themselves  solidly  where  once  they  enter  into  possession  gives  to 
the  southern  half  of  the  district,  with  the  blocks  adjoining,  an  in¬ 
tensely  foreign  aspect.  The  remaining  35  per  cent,  among  whom 
the  Irish,  the  American  with  10  per  cent,  and  the  German  nation¬ 
alities  predominate,  are  interspersed  chiefly  on  the  northern  side 
of  the  blocks,  along  Second  street. 

Rival  attractions  to  the  railroads,  factories  and  docks,  which 
claim  so  large  a  part  of  the  population  in  the  other  two  districts, 
are  here  offered  by  the  dump-grounds  adjacent.  Irregular  heavy 
laboring  work  is,  however,  the  predominating  occupation  among 
the  Italians,  though  the  rag-picker  and  junk-dealer  are  frequently 
found,  as  well  as  the  omnipresent  factory  hand. 

So  much  for  the  characteristics  of  the  separate  districts.  For 
the  remainder  of  the  paper,  the  houses  will  be  dealt  with,  in  the 
main,  without  regard  to  district  lines.  Some  preliminary  classi¬ 
fications  may  properly  be  given  before  more  detailed  points  of  con¬ 
struction  and  sanitation  are  taken  up,  or  special  evils  pointed 
out. 

First  of  all,  classifying  the  504  houses  by  materials,  we  find 
that  just  55  per  cent  are  of  wood,  and  45  per  cent  of  brick — a  few 
of  the  former  having  brick,  and  a  few  of  the  latter  stone,  fronts. 
If  we  group  them  by  the  number  of  stories,  three-story  and  three- 
story-and-basement  houses  are  found  to  lead  with  54  per  cent; 
four  and  four-story-and-basement  houses  come  next  with  31  per 
cent;  5  per  cent  have  five  stories;  the  remaining  10  per  cent  have 
either  two  stories  or  two  stories  and  basement,  with  the  exception 
of  two  houses,  one  and  one-half  stories  and  one-story-and-base- 
ment  respectively. 

Again,  we  may  group  the  houses  by  the  number  of  apartments 
contained.  Houses  occupied  by  but  one  family  w^ere  not  touched 
in  the  investigation,  but  sixty-three  two-family  houses  were 
examined,  leaving  431  houses  which  contain  accommodations 
for  three  families  or  more,  thus  falling  under  the  definition  of  a 
tenement  house  most  generally  accepted  throughout  the  country. 
Three-apartment  houses  are  most  common,  25  per  cent  of  the 
total  number  falling  under  this  head;  58  percent  have  from  four 
to  nine  apartments;  of  houses  containing  ten  apartments  or 
more  there  are  twenty-three,  or  4  per  cent. 

Another  significant  classification  of  houses  is  that  by  position 


Housing  Conditions  in  Jersey  City 


143 


on  the  lot.  Fourteen  per  cent  of  the  houses  investigated  are  rear 
houses.  These  figures,  however,  give  little  idea  of  the  actual  aspect 
of  things,  as  two  blocks  are  without  any  rear  houses,  and  six  others 
have  but  one  or  two  each,  while  in  one  block  rear  houses  constitute 
no  less  than  40  per  cent  of  all.  These  houses  are  seldom  over  three 
stories  in  height,  are  almost  always  of  wood,  are  in  general  very 
old  and  frequently  dilapidated. 

Turning  now  from  classifications  of  the  houses  themselves 
to  consider  the  apartments  they  contain,  we  find  that  three-room 
apartments  lead  by  a  wide  margin,  constituting  41  per  cent  of  the 
total  of  2,154.  Next  come  four-room  apartments  with  28  per  cent; 
two-room  apartments  with  1 2  per  cent ;  five-room  apartments  with 
7  per  cent;  six-room  apartments  with  4  per  cent.  Of  one-room 
apartments  there  is  less  than  i  per  cent  .  One  per  cent  of  the 
apartments  examined  contained  over  six  rooms. 

If  now,  leaving  these  preliminary  statistics,  we  turn  to  matters 
of  greater  interest,  we  shall  find  it  convenient  to  group  the  chief 
evils  found,  as  first,  evils  of  construction,  under  which  we  shall 
speak  only  of  the  two  leading  faults,  lack  of  proper  provision  for 
escape  in  case  of  fire,  and  inadequate  lighting  and  ventilation; 
next,  sanitary  evils,  some  of  which  are  structural  and  some  the 
result  of  natural  conditions  or  neglect;  and  lastly,  evils  of  occu¬ 
pancy,  chief  among  which  is  that  of  overcrowded  apartments. 

The  absence  of  fire-escapes  is  perhaps  the  most  conspicuous  and 
glaring  fault  observable  in  the  tenement  houses  of  Jersey  City.  Of 
the  twenty-four  five-story  buildings  found,  just  one-half  were 
provided  with  fire-escapes;  while  of  the  155  four-story  or  four- 
story-and-basement  houses,  only  four  were  so  equipped.  After 
these  figures  it  will  hardly  surprise  anyone  to  learn  that  in  no  case 
was  a  fire-escape  found  upon  a  three-story  house.  There  are  thus 
out  of  a  total  of  431  tenement  houses,  most  of  them  three  stories 
or  more  in  height,  but  sixteen,  or  3  per  cent,  which  are  provided 
with  fire-escapes  of  any  kind. 

The  character  of  the  fire-escapes  found  makes  them  in  a  num¬ 
ber  of  cases  practically  valueless.  The  balconies  of  five  had 
wooden  floors;  and  not  only  in  a  large  proportion  of  cases  were 
balconies  seriously  encumbered  and  stairway  or  ladder  openings 
covered  by  tenants,  but  in  two  instances  trap  doors  were  regularly 
fitted  to  these  openings,  the  owner  thus  encouraging  the  use  of  the 
balcony  as  a  general  catch-all  and  storage  place.  Furthermore, 


144 


The  Annals  of  the  Aniericaji  Academy 


in  only  three  houses  did  all  the  apartments  above  the  ground  floor 
have  access  to  a  balcony,  while  in  one  instance,  but  one  out  of  four 
families  was  provided  wdth  such  means  of  egress.  No  form  of  fire¬ 
proof  construction  was  anywhere  found,  even  the  dumb-waiter 
shafts  in  the  higher  buildings,  well  known  to  be  one  of  the  most 
common  paths  by  which  fire  spreads,  being  almost  without  excep¬ 
tion  of  wood. 

In  regard  to  lighting  and  ventilation,  the  facts  are  less  easily 
grouped.  The  buildings  being  seldom  of  a  depth  to  encroach 
seriously  upon  the  yards,  we  find,  with  the  exception  of  a  very  few 
of  the  higher  houses,  that  nearly  all  of  the  kitchens  and  general 
living-rooms  open  upon  the  yard  or  street  and  are  thus  adequately 
lighted.  In  the  converted  dwellings,  and  in  all  houses  occupied 
by  but  one  family  on  each  floor,  a  large  proportion  of  bedrooms 
also  are  open  to  the  outer  air.  But  in  the  three  or  four  story 
buildings  erected  originally  for  tenement  uses,  and  furnishing  ac¬ 
commodations  for  two  families  or  more  on  a  floor,  a  light  bedroom 
is  more  nearly  the  exception  than  the  rule.  The  typical  interior 
room  is  lighted  by  a  window  to  the  outer  living-room  or  a  public 
hall,  these  windows  seldom  having  more  than  five  square  feet  of 
glazed  surface,  and  more  frequently  an  area  of  from  three  to  four 
square  feet.  One  thousand  and  eighty-four  such  rooms  were  noted 
in  the  course  of  the  investigation;  while — a  still  more  serious  evil — 
399  rooms  were  found  which  had  no  window  at  all,  and  in  most 
cases  not  even  a  transom  opening  into  another  room. 

Light  and  air  shafts  were  found  in  only  a  small  proportion  of 
the  tenement  houses  investigated;  and  a  light  and  air  shaft  which 
is  more  than  the  merest  travesty  of  its  respectable  name  is  em¬ 
phatically  an  exception.  The  typical  shaft  is  a  triangular  or  oblong 
niche  in  the  outer  wall,  with  an  area  of  from  five  to  twenty  square 
feet ;  an  occasional  variation  being  found  in  a  square  shaft  of  about 
the  same  area,  let  into  the  interior  of  the  house  and  covered  in  most 
cases  by  a  skylight.  Below  the  top  story  such  shafts  furnish  prac¬ 
tically  no  light,  while  tenants  bore  almost  unvarying  witness  that 
windows  upon  them  were  uniformly  kept  closed.  A  single  whiff 
of  the  pent-up  air  within  their  narrow  walls  is  quite  sufficient  to 
convince  one  of  the  wisdom  of  such  disregard  of  their  presence; 
and  one  feels  no  surprise  in  reading  the  evidence  of  chemists  and 
physicians  as  to  the  positive  injury  to  health  wrought  by  pre¬ 
tended  ventilation  of  this  sort — evidence  which  has  led  to  the 


Housmg  Conditions  in  Jersey  City  145 

giving  of  the  suggestive  name  of  culture  tubes  to  such  shafts. 
Among  evils  of  sanitation  only  a  few  of  the  most  serious  can 
be  touched  upon.  Most  conspicuous  and  widespread  of  all  is  that 
of  the  foul  and  ill-smelling  privy  vault.  Seventy-five  per  cent 
of  the  houses  investigated  furnish  no  toilet  accommodations 
save  these  objectionable  structures  in  the  yard.  The  vaults  are 
in  the  main  sewer-connected,  one  block  and  part  of  another  in 
District  III  being  the  only  sections  in  which  no  street  sewer  is 
laid,  though  unsewered  vaults  were  found  in  small  numbers  else¬ 
where.  But  a  sewer  connection  is  in  a  large  proportion  of  cases 
a  most  illusory  blessing.  The  great  mass  of  solid  matter  frequently 
remains  after  the  liquids  have  run  off  to  the  sewer,  and  its  decom¬ 
position  renders  the  air  of  the  yard,  upon  which  the  rear  rooms  de¬ 
pend,  many  times  almost  intolerable.  In  two  cases  school-sinks — 
modified  privies,  with  metal  vaults  in  which  water  stands — were 
discovered  in  cellars;  but  as  the  water  was  changed,  according  to 
the  testimony  of  tenants,  but  once  a  week,  these  cannot  be  said 
to  offer  many  advantages  over  the  ordinary  privy.  Among  the  368 
water-closets  in  use  in  the  remaining  houses,  the  old  and  objection¬ 
able  pan  closets  number  sixty-one;  while  numerous  water-closet 
compartments  are  either  entirely  unventilated  or  have  windows 
only  to  halls  or  rooms,  and  in  a  number  of  cases,  especially  on  the 
top  floor  of  five-story  buildings,  the  water-flush  is  wholly  inade¬ 
quate  to  cleanse  the  bowl. 

A  serious  evil  is  also  found  in  the  location  and  condition  of 
household  sinks.  In  seventy  of  the  houses  investigated  all  such 
sinks  were  located  in  the  public  hall,  while  in  fifty-five  other  houses 
sinks  were  so  located  on  one  or  more  floors.  Nearly  every  such 
sink  is  used  by  two  families.  In  one  block,  chosen  at  haphazard 
from  those  of  the  Italian  district,  sixty  apartments  were  found 
whose  occupants  were  obliged  so  to  share  their  sink;  while  fifteen 
other  apartments  were  provided  with  but  one  sink  to  every  three 
or  four  apartments.  Furthermore,  eight  houses  were  found  in 
which,  in  flat  defiance  of  a  city  ordinance,  no  water  at  all  was 
furnished  indoors.  One  row  of  four  such  houses,  containing  in  all 
twenty-two  apartments,  was  provided  with  but  two  hydrants  in 
the  common  yard,  one  hydrant  serving  for  ten,  the  other  for  twelve 
apartments. 

The  collection  of  statistics  as  to  the  plumbing  of  sinks  was  not 
at  first  attempted,  but  was  taken  up  as  the  result  of  an  observation 


146 


The  Armais  of  the  American  Academy 


of  conditions  in  the  earlier  blocks  investigated.  Eleven  hundred 
and  sixty-two  sinks,  located  in  four  blocks  of  District  I,  and  in  the 
six  blocks  of  Districts  II  and  III,  were  examined.  Of  these  only 
I  ^  pe  cent  were  properly  trapped  and  vented;  68  per  cent  were 
trapped  but  not  vented — a  far  from  satisfactory  state  of  affairs, 
especially  where  as  in  many  cases  traps  were  so  small  or  other¬ 
wise  defective  as  to  be  practically  useless;  10  per  cent  were  neither 
trapped  nor  vented,  the  pipes  thus  offering  free  passage  to  the  con¬ 
taminated  sewer  air;  12  per  cent  were  boarded  up  solidly,  so  that 
the  waste-pipes  could  not  be  examined — an  almost  sure  sign  that 
the  concealed  plumbing  is  of  the  oldest  and  worst  type. 

One  serious  element  in  the  insanitary  conditions  of  the  dis¬ 
tricts  investigated,  which,  unlike  those  just  mentioned,  cannot 
primarily  be  charged  to  the  householder,  is  found  in  the  character 
of  the  land  upon  which  a  large  part  of  lower  Jersey  City  is  built. 
Only  six  of  the  sixteen  blocks  investigated  are  composed  entirely 
of  original  solid  ground.  Five  blocks  in  District  I  were  in  greater 
or  less  degree  formed  by  the  filling  in  of  marsh  land  or  the  ex¬ 
tension  of  the  water  front.  All  of  District  II,  and  nearly  all  of  two 
blocks  of  District  III,  were  so  formed.^ 

The  significance  of  these  facts  appears  when  we  realize  that 
land  so  made  is  largely  intermingled  with  refuse  matter,  and,  still 
more  important,  is  generally  damp  and  is  subject  to  periodic  risings 
of  tidewater.  In  a  large  proportion  of  the  houses  built  upon  such 
land,  observations  of  the  investigator,  supplemented  by  the  testi- 
nony  of  tenants,  proves  that  the  water  in  cellars  unprotected,  as 
are  nearly  all,  by  water-proof  flooring,  stands  at  times  to  a  depth 
of  several  inches.  Sewage  is  thus  frequently  washed  back  into 
yards  and  cellars,  first-floor  apartments  are  rendered  damp  and 
unhealthful,  and  nauseating  odors  suggest  the  serious  danger  to 
health  which  such  a  condition  brings  upon  the  entire  house.  For¬ 
tunately  the  cellar-dwelling  evil  is  not  a  prevalent  one  in  Jersey 
City;  yet  one  instance  is  recalled  where  a  family  paying  for  four 
rooms  in  the  basement  and  first  floor  had  been  obliged  to  vacate 
the  lower  two  rooms  entirely — the  men  of  the  family  wading 
through  water  knee-deep  to  rescue  the  kitchen  stove. 

One  of  the  most  serious  evils  from  which  the  poorer  classes 
suffer  is  that  of  overcrowded  apartments.  As  was  anticipated 

1  See  topographical  map  prepared  for  the  National  Board  of  Health  in  i88o  by  Spielman  & 
Brush.  The  only  copy  known  to  exist  is  in  the  Jersey  City  Public  Library. 


Housing  Conditions  in  Jersey  City  147 

from  the  facts  brought  to  light  by  investigations  in  other  American 
cities,  this  evil  was  found  to  be  most  prevalent  among  the  poorest 
foreign  population,  especially  the  Poles  and  Italians,  and  is  largely 
due  to  the  custom  of  taking  so  called  boarders — really,  in  most 
cases,  lodgers,  who  provide  their  own  bedding  and  pay  in  the 
neighborhood  of  two  dollars  a  month. 

There  are  two  ways  of  measuring  overcrowding  in  apartments ; 
by  number  of  individuals  per  room,  and  by  cubic  air  space  per  in¬ 
dividual.  To  secure  perfectly  accurate  results,  it  is  of  course 
necessary  to  discover  just  how  many  rooms  in  a  given  apartment 
are  occupied  for  sleeping  purposes  and  how  many  persons  sleep 
in  each.  This  may  seem  a  simple  matter,  but  in  practice  reliable 
results  are  not  only  very  difficult,  but  in  many  cases  impossible  to 
secure,  save  by  a  night  inspection.  Not  only  must  allowance  be 
made  for  very  general  under-statement  of  the  number  of  boarders 
taken,  but  in  a  large  proportion  of  cases  either  no  answers  at  all  or 
wholly  unsatisfactory  answers  can  be  obtained  to  questions  as  to 
the  distribution  of  members  of  the  family  and  of  boarders  at  night. 
Under  these  circumstances  it  has  seemed  best,  instead  of  attempting 
to  state  the  number  of  individuals  sleeping  in  each  room  and  the 
precise  cubic  air  space  afforded  by  that  room  to  each,  to  give  the 
ratio  of  number  of  occupants  to  entire  number  of  rooms  in  each 
apartment,  and  the  cubic  air  space  per  individual  afforded  by  that 
apartment  as  a  whole.  Only  rough  indications  of  the  degree  of 
overcrowding  at  night  are  of  course  given  by  this  method,  but  it 
has  at  least  the  advantage  of  greater  accuracy  so  far  as  it  goes  than 
could  fairly  be  claimed  for  one  seemingly  more  precise. 

Applying  the  method  of  measurement  by  cubic  air  space  to  the 
2,154  apartments  investigated,  we  find  that  in  65  per  cent  of 
them  each  occupant  has  an  allowance  of  600  cubic  feet  of  air  or  more. 
Living  conditions  in  most  of  these  apartments  are  fair,  and  in  many 
good ;  yet  some  of  the  most  disgraceful  cases  of  overcrowding  were 
found  among  them — as  in  one  apartment,  where  in  a  single  large 
room  two  little  girls  of  about  twelve  years  slept,  together  with  a  vary¬ 
ing  number  of  male  boarders.  The  remaining  35  per  cent  of  apart¬ 
ments  afford  less  than  600  cubic  feet  of  air  space  per  occupant. 
This  means  in  nearly  all  cases  a  serious  degree  of  overcrowding;  since 
if  bedrooms  alone  are  occupied  at  night  such  an  allowance  for  the 
whole  apartment  means  actually  on  an  average  less  than  400  cubic 
feet,  and  often  less  than  300  or  even  200  cubic  feet  for  each  person; 
while  if  the  crowding  compels  the  use  of  the  kitchen  for  sleeping 


148 


The  Annals  of  the  American  Academy 


purposes,  other  evils  hardly  less  serious  are  added  to  those  of 
limited  air  space.  Such  being  the  meaning  of  the  figures  given,  it  be¬ 
comes  evident  that  in  the  199  apartments,  9  per  cent  of  all,  in  which 
there  were  found  to  be  less  than  400  cubic  feet  of  air  space  to  each 
occupant  in  the  apartment  as  a  whole,  very  serious  danger  to  health 
exists.  It  is  below  the  limit  of  400  cubic  feet  per  adult,  with  a 
smaller  allowance  for  children,  that  government  interference  has 
generally  been  authorized,  where  authorized  at  all;  as  is  notably 
the  case  in  Glasgow,  where  the  law  is  enforced  by  an  especially 
efficient  system  of  night  inspection,  and  among  American  cities  in 
New  York. 

The  other  test  of  overcrowding,  by  ratio  of  number  of  persons 
to  number  of  rooms,  while  a  less  accurate  means  of  estimating  effect 
on  health,  furnishes  a  more  accurate  indication  of  the  relation  of 
overcrowding  to  standards  of  decency.  An  example  typical  of 
many  cases  met  with  will  make  this  distinction  clear.  Suppose 
two  large  high-ceiled  rooms  with  a  total  cubic  contents  of  3,500 
cubic  feet,  occupied  by  eight  people.  Each  person  has  then  more 
than  the  minimum  of  400  cubic  feet;  yet  the  absence  of  any  possi¬ 
bility  of  privacy  or  decency  of  living  involved  where  men  and 
women  boarders,  parents  and  growing  children  make  up  the  eight, 
need  not  be  dwelt  upon.  It  is  evident  that  four  rooms  with  an 
aggregate  contents  of  less  than  3,200  cubic  feet  might  be  occupied 
by  the  same  eight  persons  with  perhaps  greater  danger  to  health 
from  limited  breathing  space,  but  with  certainly  better  opportuni¬ 
ties  for  separation  by  sexes. 

If  we  apply  this  second  method  of  measurement,  we  find  that  in 
24  per  cent  of  the  total  number  of  apartments  there  are  two  persons 
or  more  to  each  room.  Such  apartments  may  fairly  be  classed  as 
overcrowded;  since  either  every  room  is  occupied  for  sleeping 
purposes,  or  if  one  room  is  reserved  for  kitchen  and  living-room, 
the  bedrooms  are  shared  by  a  minimum  average  of  two  and  two- 
thirds,  three  or  four  persons  each,  according  as  the  number  of  rooms 
in  the  apartment  is  four,  three  or  two.'  To  appreciate  what  this 
means  it  is  of  course  necessary  to  realize  that  few  bedrooms  in 
such  apartments  contain  more  than  800  cubic  feet,  while  a  large 
proportion  are  dark  interior  rooms  containing  from  600  to  400  cubic 
feet  or  even  less.  These  facts  having  been  pointed  out,  it  is  un¬ 
necessary  further  to  emphasize  the  seriousness  of  the  state  of 
affairs,  where,  as  in  196  apartments,  9  per  cent  of  the  total  num- 

*  Very  little  overcrowding  was  found  in  apartments  of  more  than  four  rooms. 


Hotising  Conditions  in  Jersey  City 


149 


ber,  the  ratio  of  number  of  occupants  to  number  of  rooms  rises  as 
high  as  2.5  or  more. 

Space  will  not  permit  of  an  extended  comparison  of  these  con¬ 
ditions  of  overcrowding  with  those  revealed  by  similar  investiga¬ 
tions  in  other  cities.  It  is  interesting,  however,  to  note  in  passing 
that  the  average  number  of  individuals  per  room  in  the  districts 
investigated  is  higher  than  the  average  number  of  occupants  per 
room  in  the  9,859  apartments  covered  by  the  recent  investigation 
of  the  City  Homes  Association  in  Chicago;  the  former  being  1.35, 
and  the  latter  1.28  persons.  While  averages  do  not  form  the  most 
satisfactory  basis  of  comparison,  a  difference  so  marked  as  this 
unquestionably  indicates  a  greater  degree  of  overcrowding  in  the 
Jersey  City  than  in  the  Chicago  districts. 

Enough  has  been  said,  it  is  believed,  to  show  that  serious  hous¬ 
ing  problems  demand  solution  in  Jersey  City.  While  the  investi¬ 
gation  covered  the  living  environment  of  but  10,179  persons  out 
of  a  total  city  population  of  206,433,  il-  may  yet  fairly  claim  to  have 
some  representative  value.  The  districts  investigated  of  course 
present  conditions  different  in  some  respects  from  those  of  the  city 
as  a  whole.  Thus — to  use  a  method  of  comparison  too  rough  to 
have  any  but  a  suggestive  value — while  but  28  per  cent  of  the  total 
population  of  the  city  are  foreigners,  84  per  cent  of  the  heads  of  fam¬ 
ilies  whose  apartments  were  investigated  are  foreign-born.  Along 
with  this  large  proportion  of  the  poorest  foreign  population  go 
unquestionably  especially  bad  conditions  of  overcrowding,  and 
in  many  respects  of  sanitary  neglect;  though  such  is  not  the  case 
with  faults  of  housing  construction  pure  and  simple.  Nevertheless 
the  accusation  that  an  unfairly  dark  and  harrowing  picture  has 
been  presented  cannot  justly  be  brought;  since  on  the  one  hand 
many  tenement  houses  of  the  best  type  were  included,  as  is  shown 
by  a  range  of  monthly  rents  between  extremes  of  $17  and  $3  per 
apartment;  while  on  the  other,  large  numbers  of  blocks  as  bad  in 
character  as  any  of  those  investigated  could  be  pointed  out  in  other 
parts  of  the  city.  The  hope  of  furnishing  data  upon  which  a  move¬ 
ment  for  reform  might  safely  base  its  demands  was  the  determin¬ 
ing  incentive  to  the  investigation;  but  this  direct  practical  aim 
has  by  no  means  obscured  the  sociological  and  scientific  interests 
involved.  If  the  results  obtained  shall  on  the  one  hand  be  used 
as  a  point  of  departure  for  social  effort,  and  on  the  other  be  judged 
a  real  though  small  contribution  to  the  literature  of  the  housing 
problem,  the  ends  zought  will  have  been  fully  attained. 


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